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u-e  Armv 


GIFT  OF 


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Songs  of 
The  Army  of  the  Night 


Songs  of  the 
Army  of  the   Night 

and 

The  Mass  of  Christ 


By 
Francis    Adams 


New  and  revised  edition 


New  York  : 
Mitchell    Kennerley,    2    East    2gth    Street 

1910 


Editor's  Note 


FRANCIS  ADAMS'S  book  of  revolutionary  verse,  the 
"  Songs  of  the  Army  of  the  Night,"  originally  published 
in  Australia  in  1887,  was  reproduced  in  London,  with  a  few 
omissions,  three  years  later.  When  Adams  died,  he  left  two 
revised  copies  of  the  "  Songs,"  into  which  he  had  written  the 
spirited  "  England  in  Egypt "  and  a  few  other  poems  ;  and  from 
one  of  these  copies  was  printed  the  posthumous  volume  of  1894. 
That  book  having  been  out  of  print  for  some  years,  a  new  edition 
has  now  been  called  for  ;  and  in  preparing  it  I  have  ventured  to 
follow  its  author's  example  and  to  omit  a  few  poems  (chiefly  from 
the  Australian  section)  which  are  no  longer  relevant.  On  the 
other  hand  I  have  inserted,  at  the  place  which  he  assigned  to  it, 
the  remarkable  poem  entitled  "  The  Mass  of  Christ,"  which  for 
some  reason  was  not  previously  included. 

A  few  biographical  facts  and  dates  may  serve  to  make  some 
of  the  references  in  the  "  Songs  of  the  Army  of  the  Night " 
more  intelligible.  Francis  Adams  was  Scotch  by  extraction, 
the  son  of  Professor  Leith  Adams,  a  scientist  and  army  surgeon. 
Born  at  Malta,  where  his  father's  regiment  was  stationed,  on 
September  27th,  1862,  he  spent  his  childhood  in  England,  New 
Brunswick,  and  Ireland.  He  was  educated  at  Shrewsbury 
School  (the  "  Colchester "  described  in  his  autobiographical 
novel,  "  A  Child  of  the  Age  "),  and  after  spending  two  or  three 
years  in  Paris  and  London  became  an  assistant  master  at  Ventnor 
College  in  1882.  Two  years  later  he  married  and  went  to 
Australia,  where  he  busied  himself  in  literary,  educational,  and 
political  work,  and  was  on  the  staff  of  the  Sydney  Bulletin. 
His  wife  having  died  in  Australia,  his  second  marriage  took 
place  there  in  1887,  and  in  the  same  year  he  went  on  a  short 
voyage  to  China  and  Japan.  In  1890  he  returned  to  England, 
much  broken  in  health,  and  his  last  two  winters  were  spent  in 


6.  ;•:.;•:;: _;  Editor's  Note 

the  Riviera  and  Egypt.  He  died,  by  his  own  hand,  at  Margate 
on  September  4th,  1893. 

Gifted  with  great  natural  vitality,  both  physical  and  mental, 
Adams  found  himself  at  an  early  age  the  victim  of  inherited  con- 
sumption, and  his  short  life  was  the  incessant  struggle  of  a  proud 
and  courageous  spirit  against  poverty  and  disease.  Thus  it  was 
that  the  sensitiveness  of  his  intensely  high-strung  temperament, 
sharpened  by  suffering  and  disappointment,  found  such  poignant 
expression  in  these  keen  fierce  lyrics,  on  fire  alike  with  love  and 
with  hate,  which  express  the  passionate  sympathies  and  deep 
resentments  of  the  modern  revolutionary  movement  somewhat  as 
Elliott's  "  Corn  Law  Rhymes  "  and  Brough's  "  Songs  of  the 
Governing  Classes"  spoke  the  troubled  spirit  of  their  time.  For 
Adams,  unlike  Morris,  was  not  so  much  a  convert  to  Socialism 
as  a  scion  of  Socialism,  a  veritable  "  Child  of  the  Age  "  in  the 
storm  and  stress  of  his  career  ;  and  unequal  as  his  "  Songs  "  are, 
when  judged  by  the  usual  literary  standards — in  parts  so  tender 
and  melodious,  and  again,  in  other  parts,  harsh  and  formless  to 
the  verge  of  doggerel — few  sympathetic  readers  can  be  unmoved 
by  their  passion  and  directness.  They  were  intended — so  he 
told  me — to  express  what  might  be  the  feelings  of  a  member  of 
the  working  classes,  as  he  found  out  the  hollowness — to  him,  at 
any  rate — of  our  modern  culture  and  refinement ;  and  to  this 
purpose  must  be  attributed  the  author's  deliberate  neglect  of 
poetical  canons.  Faulty  in  technique  though  some  of  his  verses 
might  be,  he  knew  exactly  what  he  had  to  say  and  how  he  could 
say  it  with  most  effect — as  in  those  trenchant  and  highly  char- 
acteristic stanzas  "To  England." 

But  the  "  Songs  "  are  not  merely  denunciatory  ;  they  have  a 
closer,  tenderer,  and  more  personal  aspect,  as  in  the  infinitely 
compassionate  "  One  among  so  Many,"  surely  one  of  the  most 
moving  poems  in  recent  literature,  which  endears  them  to  the 
heart  of  the  reader  as  only  a  few  choice  books  are  ever  endeared. 
In  this  respect  Adams's  writings  are  the  exact  counterpart  of 
his  character  ;  for  no  memory  of  him  dwells  more  abidingly  in 
the  minds  of  his  friends  than  the  occasions  when  he  would 
eloquently  dilate  on  the  people's  cause — his  beautiful  and 
expressive  features,  and  large  flashing  eyes,  lit  up  with  the  glow 
of  a  single-hearted  enthusiasm. 


Editor's  Note  7 

Francis  Adams's  literary  labours  were  many-sided,  and  the 
list  of  his  published  works  includes  more  than  twelve  volumes  of 
poems,  essays,  fiction,  and  criticism,  with  a  drama,  "  Tiberius," 
which  appeared  posthumously  in  1894.  It  was  as  a  critic  that 
he  won  the  most  praise  in  his  lifetime — and  what  it  cost  him  to 
forsake  literature  for  socialism  may  be  gathered  from  the  con- 
cluding poem  in  this  book — but  it  is  through  these  "  Songs  of 
the  Army  of  the  Night "  that  his  name  is  best  loved  and  will  be 
longest  remembered. 

HENRY  S.  SALT. 


Contents 


Editor's  Note 
Author's  Preface 
This  Book 
Dedication 


Proem 


Songs  of  the  Army  of  the  Night 


Part  I. — England 

Toil 

Axiom       ...... 

Drill 

Evening  Hymn  in  the  Hovels 

In  the  Street :  Lord  Shaftesbury   . 

"Liberty" 

In  the  Edgware  Road .... 
To  the  Girls  of  the  Unions 

Hagar 

A  Visitor  in  the  Camp 
Lord  Lei  trim      ..... 
Anarchism  ..... 

Belgravia  by  Night  :  "  Move  on !  " 

"Jesus" 

Parallels  for  the  Pious 
Prayer        .         .          . 
To  the  "  Christians  "   . 

"Defeat" 

To  John  Ruskin          .... 
To  the  Emperor  William  I  . 
Song  of  the  Dispossessed  :  "  To  Jesus  " 
Art  . 


PAGE 

5 
1 1 

H 
15 


18 
18 

'9 

20 

21 
21 

23 
24 
24 

25 
26 
27 
27 
28 
29 
29 
30 
30 
31 

33 
34 
34 


Contents  9 

PAGE 

The  Peasants'  Revolt 35 

Analogy 37 

In  Trafalgar  Square     .          .          .         .          .          .          -38 

A  Street  Fight 38 

Greek  Lyrics       ........     39 

To  a  Workman,  a  would-be  Suicide       .         .          .          .40 

Dublin  at  Dawn  .          .          .          .          .          .          .     41 

The  Caged  Eagle 42 

Ireland        .........     43 

To  Charles  Parnell 44 

An  "  Assassin  ".          .......     44 

"  Holy  Russia  " 45 

Pere-la-Chaise 47 

Aux  Ternes          ........     47 

The  Truth 49 

London      .........     50 

Post  Mortem       ........     50 

To  the  Sons  of  Labour          .          .          .          .          .          -5° 

To  an  Artist        .         .         .         .         .         .          .  52 

One  among  so  Many    .          .         .         .          .         .          -53 

The  New  Locksley  Hall 54 

Farewell  to  the  Market  :  ««  Susannah  and  Mary-Jane  "      .      59 

Part  II. — Here  and  There 

England  in  Egypt         .          .          .          .          .          .          .62 

In  the  Pit  :  "  Chant  of  the  Firemen  "   .          .         .          .64 

A  Mahomedan  Ship  Fireman          .          .          .          .          -65 

To  India 65 

To  England 66 

Hong  Kong  Lyrics      .......     68 

A  Glimpse  of  China    .          .          .          .          .          .  71 

To  Japan  .........     74 

Dai  Butsu  .........     75 

England     .........      75 

The  Fisherman  ........     76 

A  South-Sea  Islander  .......     76 

New  Guinea  "  Converts "     .         .         .         .         .         -77 

A  Death  at  Sea 78 


i  o  Contents 

PAGE 

Part  III. — Australia 

The  Outcasts      ........     80 

In  the  Sea  Gardens  :  "  The  Man  of  the  Nation  "   .          .80 
Labour — Capital — Land       ,         .         .         .         .         .81 

Australia    .........     82 

Art 82 

Henry  George    .         .         .         .          .         .         .         -83 

William  Wallace 85 

The  Australian  Flag 85 

To  an  Old  Friend  in  England 86 

To  His  Love 86 

Her  Poem 87 

To  Karl  Marx 88 

Algernon  Charles  Swinburne  .          .         .         .         .88 

To  my  friend,  Sydney  Jephcott      .          .          .          .          .89 
"  Father  Abe  "  :  Song  of  the  American  Sons  of  Labour     90 

"A  Fool"         .  92 

The  Mass  of  Christ 95 

From  a  Verandah :  Armageddon  .          .          .         .          .106 

To  Queen  Victoria  in  England      .         .          .          .          .106 

Elsie:  A  Memory       .         .         .          .          .         .          .108 

Why  He  Loves  Her  .          .          .          .          .          .          .109 

To  His  Love       .          .          .          .          .          .          .          .110 

To  the  Emperor  William  II  .          .         .          .         .    1 1 1 

A  Story 1 1 1 

At  the  West  India  Docks 114 

Dirge 118 

Fling  out  the  Flag !     .          .         .         .          .         .          .119 

Farewell  to  the  Children       .         .          .         .         .          .121 

Epode 123 


Author's  Preface 


A  FEW  words  of  preface  seem  necessary  in  sending  out 
^•^  this  little  book.  It  is  to  be  looked  on  as  the  product  of 
the  life  of  a  social  worker  in  England,  on  his  Travels,  and  in 
Australia.  The  key-note  of  the  First  Part — "  England  " — is 
desperation,  or,  if  any  hope,  then  "  desperate  hope."  A  friend 
once  reported  to  me  a  saying  of  Matthew  Arnold's,  that  he  did 
not  believe  in  any  man  of  intelligence  taking  a  desperate  view  of 
the  social  problem  in  England.  I  am  afraid  that  saying  rele- 
gates me  to  the  ranks  of  the  .fools,  but  I  am  content  to  remain 
there.  I  believe  that  never  since  1381,  which  is  the  date  of 
the  Peasants'  Revolt,  has  England  presented  such  a  spectacle  of 
the  happiness  of  the  tens,  of  the  misery  of  the  millions.  It  is 
not  by  any  means  the  artisan,  or  the  general  or  the  agricultural 
labourer,  who  is  the  only  sufferer.  All  society  groans  under  the 
slavery  of  stupendous  toil  and  a  pittance  wage.  The  negro 
slavery  of  the  Southern  States  of  America  was  better  than  the 
white  slavery  of  to-day  all  over  the  earth,  but  more  particularly 
in  Europe  and  in  America.  The  vast  edifice  of  our  Civilization 
is  built  on  the  essential  wrong  of  recompensing  Labour,  not 
according  to  the  worth  of  its  work,  but  according  to  the  worth 
of  its  members  in  the  market  of  unlimited  competition,  and  that 
soon  comes  to  mean  the  payment  of  what  will  hold  body  and 
soul  together  when  in  the  enjoyment  of  health  and  strength. 
Landlordism  shares  with  Capitalism  the  plunder  of  Labour. 
Why  are  rents  high  in  Australia  ?  Because  here  Labour  is 
scarcer,  its  wages  correspondingly  higher,  and  therefore  Land- 
lordism steps  in  to  filch  from  Labour  its  hard-won  comforts, 
and  once  more  reduce  it  to  the  necessities  of  existence.  The 
American  slavers  had  to  spend  more  in  housing  and  keeping  any 
fixed  number  of  their  slaves  in  serviceable  condition  than  Capi- 
talism spends  in  wages.  Capitalism  and  Landlordism,  like  good 


12  Author's  Preface 

Christian  institutions,  leave  the  living  to  keep  alive  their  living, 
and  the  dead  to  bury  their  dead.  This  cannot  continue  for 
ever.  At  least  all  the  intelligent  portion  of  the  community  will 
grow  to  see  the  injustice  and  attempt  to  abolish  it.  But  when 
will  the  great  mass  of  unintelligent  people  who  have  won  a  large 
enough  share  of  the  plunder  of  their  fellows  to  minister  to  their 
own  comforts — when  will  these,  also,  awake  and  see  ?  Eng- 
land will  realize  the  desperation  of  her  social  problem  when  its 
desperation  is  shown  her  by  fire  and  blood — then,  and  not  till 
then !  What  shall  teach  her  her  sins  to  herself  is  what  is  even 
now  teaching  her  her  sins  to  Ireland. 

I  make  no  apology  for  several  poems  in  the  First  Part  which 
are  fierce,  which  are  even  bloodthirsty.  As  I  felt  I  wrote,  and 
I  will  not  lessen  the  truth  of  what  inspired  those  feelings  by 
eliminating  or  suppressing  the  record  of  them.  Rather,  let  me 
ask  you,  whoever  you  be,  to  imagine  what  the  cause  was,  from 
the  effect  in  one  who  was  (unhappily)  born  and  bred  into  the 
dominant  class,  and  whose  chief  care  and  joy  in  life  was  in  the 
pursuit  of  a  culture  which  draws  back  instinctively  from  the 
violent  and  the  terrible.  I  will  go  further.  I  will  arraign  my 
country  and  my  day,  because  their  iniquity  would  not  let  me 
follow  out  the  laws  of  my  nature,  which  were  for  luminosity  and 
quiet,  for  the  wide  and  genial  view,  but  made  me  "  take  arms 
against  a  sea  of  troubles,"  hoping  only  too  often  "  by  opposing 
to  end  them."  No,  we  make  no  apology  for  bloody  sweat  and 
for  tears  of  fire  wrung  out  of  us  in  the  Gethsemane  and  on  the 
Calvary  of  our  country ;  we  make  no  apology  to  those  whom 
we  have  the  right  to  curse. 

In  the  Second  Part — "  Here  and  There,"  the  record  of  a 
short  trip  in  the  East — the  sight  of  the  sin  which  England  has 
committed  not  only  against  herself,  against  Ireland,  against 
Scotland,  but  against  India,  against  China,  against  the  sweetest 
and  gentlest  people  in  the  earth,  the  Japanese — the  sight  of  this, 
and  of  the  signs  of  England's  doom,  the  punishment  for  the 
abuse  of  the  greatest  trust  any  modern  nation  has  had  given  to 
her,  inspires  a  hatred  which  only  that  punishment  can  appease. 

In  the  Third  Part — "Australia" — there  is  neither  ferocity 
nor  bloodthirstiness.  Its  key-note  is  hope,  hope  that  dreads 
but  does  not  despair. 


Author's  Preface  13 

We  know  well  enough  that  our  plea  for  comprehension  will 
too  often  be  an  idle  one.  None  the  less  we  make  it,  for  the 
sake  of  those  who  are  willing  to  attempt  to  realize  the  social 
problem  and  to  seek  within  themselves  what  they  can  do  for  its 
solution.  We  have  no  care  whatever  as  to  what  view  they  take 
of  it.  Let  them  be  with  us  or  against  us,  it  matters  not,  if  only 
they  will  make  this  effort,  if  only  they  will  ponder  it  in  their 
hearts.  Ninety-nine  out  of  a  hundred  of  us  are  concerned  in 
this  problem.  We  are  all  of  us  true  sons  of  Labour  who  have 
suffered  the  robbery  of  the  wages  of  Competition. 

Brothers  all  over  the  earth,  Brothers  and  Sisters,  you  of  that 
silent  company  whose  speech  is  only  in  the  unknown  deeds  of 
love,  the  unknown  devotions,  the  unknown  heroisms,  it  is  to  you 
we  speak  !  Our  heart  is  against  your  heart ;  you  can  feel  it 
beat.  Soul  speaks  to  soul  through  lips  whose  utterance  is  a 
need.  In  your  room  alone,  in  your  lonely  walks,  in  the  still 
hours  of  day  and  night  we  will  be  with  you.  We  will  speak 
with  you,  we  will  plead  with  you,  for  these  piteous  ones.  In 
the  evening  trees  you  shall  hear  the  sound  of  our  weeping.  Our 
sobs  shall  shake  in  the  wind  of  wintry  nights.  We  are  the 
spirit  of  those  piteous  ones,  the  wronged,  the  oppressed,  the 
robbed,  the  murdered,  and  we  bid  you  open  your  warm  heart, 
your  light-lit  soul  to  us !  We  will  thrill  you  with  the  clarion 
of  hate  and  defiance  and  despair  in  the  tempest  of  land  and  sea. 
You  shall  listen  to  us  there  also.  We  will  touch  your  eyes  and 
lips  with  fire.  No,  we  will  never  let  you  go,  till  you  are  ours 
and  theirs!  And  you  too,  O  Sufferers,  you  too  shall  stay 
with  us,  and  shall  have  comfort.  Look,  we  have  suffered,  we 
have  agonized,  we  have  longed  to  hasten  the  hour  of  rest.  But 
beyond  the  darkness  there  is  light,  beyond  the  turbulence  peace. 
"  Courage  and  be  true  to  one  another."  "  We  bid  you  hope" 

Sydney,  Christmas,  1887. 


This  Book 

7  give  this  Book 

TO  YOU, — 

Man  or  woman,  girt  or  boy,  labourer,  mechanic,  clerk,  house- 
servant,  whoever  you  may  be,  whose  wages  are  not  the  worth  of 
your  work, — no,  nor  a  fraction  of  it, — whose  wages  are  the  mini- 
mum which  you  and  those  like  you,  pressed  by  the  desire  for  life  in 
the  dreadful  struggle  of  "  Competition"  will  consent  to  take  from 
your  Employers  who,  thanks  to  it,  are  able  thus  to  rob  you : — 

/  give  it  to  YOU, 

in  the  hope  that  you  may  see  how  you  are  being  robbed, — how 
Capital  that  is  won  by  paying  you  your  competition  wages  is 
plunder, — how  Rent  that  is  won  by  the  increased  value  of  land  that 
is  owing  to  the  industry  of  us  all,  is  plunder, — how  the  Capitalist 
and  Landowner  who  over-ride  you,  how  the  Master  or  Mistress 
who  work  you  from  morning  till  night,  who  domineer  over  you  as 
servants  and  despise  you  (or  what  is  worse,  pity  you)  as  beggars, 
are  the  men  and  women  whose  sole  title  to  this  is,  that  they  have 
the  audacity  and  skill  to  plunder  you,  and  you  the  simplicity  and 
folly  not  to  see  it  and  to  submit  to  it: — 

I  give  this  Book  to  YOU, 

in  the  hope  that  you  may  at  last  realize  this,  and  in  your  own  fashion 
never  cease  the  effort  to  make  your  fellow-sufferers  realize  it : 

1  give  it  to  YOU, 

in  the  hope  that  you  may  formally  enrol  yourself  in  the  ran  fa  of  the 
Army  of  the  Night,  and  that  you  will  offer  up  the  best  that  has  been 
granted  you  of  heart  and  soul  and  mind  towards  the  working  out  of 
that  better  time  when,  in  victorious  peace,  we  silence  our  drums  and 
trumpets,  furl  our  banners,  drag  our  cannons  to  their  place  of  rest, 
and  solemnly  disarming  ourselves,  become  citizens  once  more,  or,  if 
soldiers,  then  soldiers  of  the  Army  of  the  Day  ! 


Dedication 


To  His  Love 

0  WEETEST,  in  desperate  hours 
^   Of  clouds  and  lightning  and  rain, 
You  came  like  a  vision  of  flowers 

And  summer  and  song  once  again  : 
You  came,  and  I  could  not  receive  you, 
Seared  in  my  flesh,  in  my  sight. 

1  heedlessly  turned  back  to  leave  you  ; 

We  passed  on  into  the  night. 
(Hearty  soul  and  ally  sweety  never  to  sever, 
Love  me  for  ever  /) 

Dearest,  in  hours  of  twilight, 

Terrible,  silent  and  lone, 
When  the  light,  long  sought  for  as  my  light 

And  found,  for  ever  seemed  gone — 
When  the  hope  of  the  love-dream  of  boyhood 

Passed  sad  with  unknowing  rebuff, 
With  your  passionate  patience  and  joyhood 

You  came,  O  my  Priestess  of  Love  ! 
(Hearty  soul  and  ally  deary  never  to  sever y 

Love  me  for  ever  I) 

With  your  lips  to  mine  deathly-reposing, 
You  kissed  back  the  blood  and  the  sighs : 

You  lit  up  my  tired  eyes  unclosing 
With  the  light  of  your  beautiful  eyes. 

'5 


1 6  Dedication 

You  held  me  close-pressed  to  your  bosom, 
Your  heart  to  my  heart,  beating  strong, 

In  mine  eyes  put  your  life  like  a  blossom, 
Put  my  love  in  your  lips  like  a  song ! 

(Heartt  soul  and  all,  sweet,  never  to  sever, 
Love  me  for  ever  /) 

Dearest,  of  my  heart-blood's  Evangel 

I  hail  you  Queen,  and  of  me : 
Sweetest,  I  revere  you  Archangel 

Of  the  better  time  that  shall  be. 
So  to  these  Songs,  for  my  love's  sake, 

As  Priestess  of  Love  must  you  stand, 
And,  for  the  great  Truth  above's  sake, 

God's  seraph  with  his  sword  in  your  hand ! 
(Heart)  soul  and  all,  dear,  never  to  sever. 

Love  me  for  ever!) 


Songs  of  the 
Army  of  the  Night 


Proem 

TN  the  black  night,  along  the  mud-deep  roads, 
Amid  the  threatening  boughs  and  ghastly  streams, 

Hark !  sounds  that  gird  the  darknesses  like  goads, 
Murmurs  and  rumours  and  reverberant  dreams, 

Trampling,  breaths,  movements,  and  a  little  light. — 

The  marching  of  the  Army  of  the  Night  ! 

The  stricken  men,  the  mad  brute-beasts  are  keeping 
No  more  their  places  in  the  ditches  or  holes, 

But  rise,  and  join  us,  and  the  women,  weeping 
Beside  the  roadways,  rise  like  demon-souls. 

Fill  up  the  ranks  !     What  shimmers  there  so  bright  ? 

The  bayonets  of  the  Army  of  the  Night  I 

Fill  up  the  ranks !     We  march  in  steadfast  column, 
In  wavering  lines  yet  forming  more  and  more ; 

Men,  women,  children,  sombre,  silent,  solemn, 
Rank  follows  rank  like  billows  to  the  shore. 

Dawnwards  we  tramp,  towards  the  hills  and  light. 

O»,  on  and  up,  the  Army  of  the  Night  1 


I.    England 


Toil 

T  TOIL,  I  toil,  as  toils  a  jaded  horse 

A     Around  the  ever-changing  changeless  track 

From  sunrise  on  to  sunset,  till  the  mill, 

That  grinds  in  flour  my  heart  and  soul,  is  still, 

And  the  ropes  are  loosed,  and  I  may  leave  my  course 

And  silent,  alone  with  the  night,  go  back 
To  misery  and  the  cruel  sleep  whose  breasts, 
Bitter  to  suck,  give  poisoned  milk.     And  this 
Is  my  life !     And  everything  attests 
Hell's  fleshless  hand  that  holds  me  pitiless ! 


Axiom 

T    ET  him  who  toils,  enjoy 
"•^  Fruit  of  his  toiling. 
Let  him  whom  sweats  annoy, 
No  more  be  spoiling. 

For  we  would  have  it  be 
That,  weak  or  stronger, 

Not  he  who  works,  but  he 
Who  works  not,  hunger  ! 


18 


Drill  19 


Drill 

TX/'HEN  day's  hard  task's  done, 

*  *      Eve's  scant  meal  partaken, 
Out  we  steal  each  one, 
Weariless,  unshaken. 

In  small  reeking  squares, 
Garbaged  plots,  we  gather, 

Little  knots  and  pairs, 
Brother,  sister,  father. 

Then  the  Word  is  given. 

In  their  silent  places 
Under  lowering  heaven, 

Range  our  stern-set  faces. 

Now  we  march  and  wheel 

In  our  clumsy  line, 
Shouldering  sticks  for  steel, 

Thoughts  bitter  as  brine  ! 

Drill,  drill,  drill,  and  drill ! 

It  is  only  thus 
Conquer  yet  we  will 

Those  who've  conquered  us. 

Patience,  sisters,  mothers ! 

We  must  not  forget 
Foiled  dead  fathers,  brothers  ; 

They  must  teach  us  yet. 

In  that  Hour  we  see, 

The  Hour  of  our  Desire, 

What  shall  their  slayers  be  ? 
As  the  stubble  to  the  fire  / 


2O     Evening  Hymn  in  the  Hovels 


Evening  Hymn  in  the  Hovels 

"  \\T E  sow  the  fertile  seed  and  then  we  reap  it ; 

*  *      We  thresh  the  golden  grain  ;  we  knead  the  bread. 
Others  that  eat  are  glad.     In  store  they  keep  it, 
While  we  hunger  outside  with  hearts  like  lead. 

Hallelujah  ! 

"  We  hew  the  stone  and  saw  it,  rear  the  city. 

Others  inhabit  there  in  pleasant  ease. 
We  have  no  thing  to  ask  of  them  save  pity, 

No  answer  they  to  give  but  what  they  please. 

Hallelujah  ! 

"  Is  it  for  ever,  fathers,  say,  and  mothers, 

That  we  must  toil  and  never  know  the  light  ? 

Is  it  for  ever,  sisters,  say,  and  brothers, 

That  they  must  grind  us  dead  here  in  the  night  ? 

Hallelujah! 

"  O  we  who  sow,  reap,  knead,  shall  we  not  also 
Have  strength  and  pleasure  of  the  food  we  make  ? 

O  we  who  hew,  build,  deck,  shall  we  not  also 
The  happiness  that  we  have  given  partake  ? 

Hallelujah  !  " 


cc 


Liberty  !  "  2 1 


In  the  Street 

LORD  SHAFTESBURY 

\7O\J  have  done  well,  we  say  it.     You  are  dead, 

And,  of  the  man  that  with  the  right  hand  takes 
Less  than  the  left  hand  gives,  let  it  be  said 

He  has  done  something  for  our  wretched  sakes. 
For  those  to  whom  you  gave  their  daily  bread 

Rancid  with  God-loathed  "  charity,"  their  drink 
Putrid  with  man-loathed  "  sin,"  we  bow  our  head 

Grateful,  as  the  great  hearse  goes  by,  and  think. 
Yes,  you  have  fed  the  flesh  and  starved  the  soul 

Of  thousands  of  us  ;  you  have  taught  too  well 
The  Rich  are  little  gods  beyond  control, 

Save  of  your  big  God  of  the  heaven  and  hell. 
We  thank  you.     This  was  pretty  once,  and  right. 
Now  it  wears  rather  thin.     My  lord,  good  night ! 


"Liberty!" 

«  f    IBERTY  ?  "     Is  that  the  cry,  then  ? 

*L'  We  have  heard  it  oft  of  yore. 
Once  it  had,  we  think,  a  meaning  ; 

Let  us  hear  it  now  no  more. 


We  have  read  what  history  tells  us 
Of  its  heroes,  martyrs  too. 

Doubtless  they  were  very  splendid, 
But  they're  not  for  me  and  you. 


22  "  Liberty  ! 


There  were  Greeks  who  fought  and  perished, 
Won  from  Persians  deathless  graves. 

Had  we  lived  then,  we're  aware  that 

We'd  have  been  those  same  Greeks'  slaves ! 

Then  a  Roman  came  who  loved  us ; 

Caesar  gave  men  tongues  and  swords. 
Crying  "  Liberty,"  they  fought  him, 

Cato  and  his  wild-beast  lords. 

When  he'd  give  a  broader  franchise, 
Lift  the  mangled  nations  bowed, 

Crying  "  Liberty  !  "  they  killed  him, 
Brutus  and  his  cut-throat  crowd. 

We  have  read  what  history  tells  us, 

O  the  truthful  memory  clings ! 
Tacitus,  the  chartered  liar, 

Gloating  over  poisoned  kings  ! 

"  Liberty !  "     The  stale  cry  echoes 
Past  smug  homesteads,  tinsel  thrones, 

Over  smoking  fields  and  hovels, 

Murdered  peasants'  bleaching  bones. 

That's  the  cry  that  mocked  us  madly, 

Toiling  in  our  living  graves, 
When  hell-mines  sent  up  the  chorus  ; 

"  Britons  never  shall  be  slaves !  " 

"  Liberty !  "     We  care  not  for  it ! 

What  we  care  for's  food,  clothes,  homes, 
For  our  dear  ones,  toiling,  waiting 

For  the  time  that  never  comes ! 


In  the  Edgware  Road        23 


In  the  Edgware  Road 
(To  LORD  ) 

you  not  buy  ?     She  asks  you,  my  lord,  you 
Who  know  the  points  desirable  in  such. 
She  does  not  say  that  she  is  perfect.     True, 

She's  not  too  pleasant  to  the  sight  or  touch. 
But  then — neither  are  you  ! 

Her  cheeks  are  rather  fallen  in  ;  a  mist 
Glazes  her  eyes,  for  all  their  hungry  glare. 

Her  lips  do  not  breathe  balmy  when  they're  kissed. 
And  yet  she's  not  more  loathsome  than,  I  swear, 

Your  grandmother  at  whist. 

My  lord,  she  will  admit,  and  need  not  frame 
Excuses  for  herself,  that  she's  not  chaste. 

First  a  young  lover  had  her ;  then  she  came 
From  one  man's  to  another's  arms,  with  haste. 

Your  mother  did  the  same. 

Moreover,  since  she's  married,  once  or  twice 
She's  sold  herself  for  certain  things  at  night. 

To  sell  one's  body  for  the  highest  price 

Of  social  ease  and  power,  all  girls  think  right. 

Your  sister  did  it  thrice. 

What,  you'll  not  buy  ?     You'll  curse  at  her  instead  ? — 
Her  children  are  alone,  at  home,  quite  near. 

These  winter  streets,  so  gay  at  nights,  'tis  said, 
Have  'ticed  the  wanton  out.     She  could  not  hear 

Her  children  cry  for  bread  ! 


24  Hagar 


To  the  Girls  of  the  Unions 

/'"MRLS,  we  love  you,  and  love 
^-*   Asks  you  to  give  again 
That  which  draws  it  above, 
Beautiful,  without  stain. 

Give  us  weariless  faith 

In  our  Cause  pure,  passionate, 
Dearer  than  life  and  death, 

Dear  as  the  love  that's  it ! 

Give  to  the  man  who  turns 
Traitrous  hands  or  forlorn 

Back  from  the  plough  that  burns, 
Give  him  pitiless  scorn  ! 

Let  him  know  that  no  wife 

Would  bear  him  a  fearless  child 

To  hate  and  loathe  the  life 
Of  a  leprous  father  defiled. 

Gir/s,  we  love  you,  and  love 

Asks  you  to  give  again 
That  which  draws  it  abovet 

Beautiful,  without  stain  ! 


Hagar 

CHE  went  along  the  road, 
*•*  Her  baby  in  her  arms, 

The  night  and  its  alarms 
Made  deadlier  her  load. 


A  Visitor  in  the  Camp       25 

Her  shrunken  breasts  were  dry ; 

She  felt  the  hunger  bite. 

She  lay  down  in  the  night, 
She  and  the  child,  to  die. 

But  it  would  wail,  and  wail, 

And  wail.     She  crept  away. 

She  had  no  word  to  say, 
Yet  still  she  heard  it  wail. 

She  took  a  jagged  stone  ; 

She  wished  it  to  be  dead. 

She  beat  it  on  the  head  ; 
It  only  gave  one  moan. 

She  has  no  word  to  say ; 

She  sits  there  in  the  night. 

The  east  sky  glints  with  light, 
And  it  is  Christmas  Day ! 


A  Visitor  in  the  Camp 

To  MARY  ROBINSON* 


,  are  you  lost,  you  pretty  little  lady  ? 
This  is  no  place  for  such  sweet  things  as  you. 
Our  bodies,  rank  with  sweat,  will  make  you  sicken, 
And,  you'll  observe,  our  lives  are  rank  lives  too." 

*  In  The  New  Arcadia  Miss  Robinson  devoted  to  the  Cause  of  Labour 
a  dilettante  little  book  that  had  not  even  one  note  of  the  true,  the  sweet 
and  lovely  poetry  of  her  deeper  impulses.  There  is  the  amateur,  and  the 
female  amateur,  no  less  in  perception  and  emotion  than  in  the  technical 
aspects  of  our  art,  and  we  want  no  more  flimsy  "  sympathetic  "  rigmaroles 
like  "The  Cry  of  the  Children"  or  "A  Song  for  the  Ragged  Schools  of 
London,"  from  those  who,  in  the  portraiture  of  the  divine  simple  woman's 
soul  within  them,  can  give  us  poetry,  genuine  and  complete. 


26  Lord  Leitrim 

"  Oh  no,  I  am  not  lost !     Oh  no,  I've  come  here 
(And  I  have  brought  my  lute,  see,  in  my  hand) 

To  see  you,  and  to  sing  of  all  you  suffer 

To  the  great  World,  and  make  it  understand !  " 

"  WelI9  say  !     If  one  of  those  who'd  robbed  you  thousands, 
Dropped  you  a  sixpence  in  the  gutter  where 

Tou  lay  and  rotted,  would  you  call  her  angel, 
For  all  her  charming  smile  and  dainty  air  ?  " 

"  Oh  no,  I  come  not  thus !     Oh  no,  I've  come  here 
With  heart  indignant,  pity  like  a  flame, 

To  try  and  help  you  !  "— "  Pretty  little  lady, 
It  will  be  best  you  go  back  whence  you  came. 

"  'Enthusiasms '  we  have  such  little  time  for  ! 

In  our  rude  camp  we  drill  the  whole  day  long. 
When  we  return  from  out  the  serried  Battle, 

Come,  and  we'll  listen  to  your  pretty  song  !  " 


Lord  Leitrim 

r>  RUTE  beast,  at  last  you  have  it !     Now  we  know 
*~*  Truth's  not  a  phrase,  justice  an  idle  show. 
Your  life  ran  red  with  murder,  green  with  lust. 
Blood  has  washed  blood  clean,  and  in  the  final  dust 
Your  carrion  will  be  purified.     Yet,  see, 
Though  your  body  perish,  for  your  soul  shall  be 
An  immortality  of  infamy ! 


Belgravia  by  Night  27 


Anarchism 

"~pIS  not  when  I  am  here, 

In  these  homeless  homes, 
Where  sin  and  shame  and  disease 
And  foul  death  comes  ; 

'Tis  not  when  heart  and  brain 

Would  be  still  and  forget 
Men  and  women  and  children 

Dragged  down  to  the  pit : 

But  when  I  hear  them  declaiming 
Of  "  liberty,"  "  order,"  and  "  law," 

The  husk-hearted  Gentleman 
And  the  mud-hearted  Bourgeois, 

That  a  sombre  hateful  desire 
Burns  up  slow  in  my  breast 

To  wreck  the  great  guilty  Temple, 
And  give  us  rest ! 


Belgravia  by  Night 
"  Move  on  !  " 

"  '"THE  foxes  have  holes, 

*     And  the  birds  of  the  air  have  nests, 
But  where  shall  the  heads  of  the  sons  of  men 
Be  laid,  be  laid  ? " 


28  "Jesus" 

"Where  the  cold  corpse  rests, 

Where  the  sightless  moles 

Burrow  and  yet  cannot  make  it  afraid. 

Rout  but  cannot  wake  it  again, 

There  shall  the  heads  of  the  sons  of  men 

Be  laid,  be  laid!" 


"Jesus" 


is  poor  Jesus  gone  ? 
He  sits  with  Dives  now, 
And  his  dogs  flesh  their  teeth 
On  Lazarus  below. 

Where  is  poor  Jesus  gone  ? 

He  is  with  Magdalen. 
He  doles  her  piece  by  piece, 

Her  pittance  of  shame  ! 

Where  is  poor  Jesus  gone  ? 

The  good  Samaritan, 
What  does  he  there  alone  ? 

He  stabs  the  wounded  man  ! 

Where  is  poor  Jesus  gone, 
The  lamb  they  sacrificed  ?  — 

They've  made  God  of  his  carrion 
And  labelled  it  "  Christ  !  " 


Prayei 


29 


Parallels  for  the  Pious 

"  JLJ  E  holds  a  pistol  to  my  head, 

Swearing  he  will  shoot  me  dead, 
If  he  have  not  my  purse  instead, 
The  robber ! " 


"  He,  with  the  lash  of  wealth  and  power ; 
Flogs  out  my  heart  and  flings  the  dower. 
The  sneering  pittance  of  his  hour, 
The  robber!" 

"  He  shakes  his  serpent  tongue  that  lies, 
Wins  trust  for  poisoned  sophistries, 
And  stabs  me  in  the  dark,  and  flies, 
The  assassin ! " 


"  He  pits  me  in  the  dreadful  Jight 
Against  my  fellow.     Then  he  quite 
Strips  both  his  victims  in  the  night, 
The  assassin  ! " 


Prayer 

r~pHIS  is  what  I  pray 
"*•     In  this  horrible  day, 
In  this  terrible  night — 
I  may  still  have  light. 
Such  as  I  have  had, 
That  I  go  not  mad. 


30  "  Defeat? 


This  is  what  I  seek — 
I  may  keep  me  meek 
Till  mine  eyes  behold, 
Till  my  lips  have  told 
All  this  hellish  Crime.- 
Then  ifs  sleeping  time  ! 


To  the  "Christians" 

r~PAKE,  then,  your  paltry  Christ, 

Your  gentleman  God. 
We  want  the  carpenter's  son, 
With  his  saw  and  hod. 

We  want  the  man  who  loved 
The  poor  and  the  oppressed, 

Who  hated  the  Rich  man  and  King 
And  the  Scribe  and  the  Priest. 


We  want  the  Galilean 

Who  knew  cross  and  rod. 

It's  your  "  good  taste  "  that  prefers 
A  bastard  "God!" 


"  Defeat  ? " 

is  it  speaks  of  defeat  ? — 
I  tell  you  a  Cause  like  ours 
Is  greater  than  defeat  can  know  ; 
It  is  the  power  of  powers ! 


To  John  Ruskin  31 


As  surely  as  the  earth  rolls  round, 
As  surely  as  the  glorious  sun 

Follows  the  great  world  moon-wave, 
Must  our  Cause  be  won  ! 

What  is  defeat  to  us  ? — 
Learn  what  a  skirmish  tells, 

While  the  great  Army  marches  on 
To  storm  earth's  Hells ! 


To  John  Ruskin 

( Jfter  reading  his  "  Modern  Painters  ") 

\7  ES,  you  do  well  to  mock  us,  you 

Who  knew  our  bitter  woe — 
To  jeer  the  false,  deny  the  true 
In  us  blind-struggling  low, 

While,  on  your  pleasant  place  aloft 
With  flowers  and  clouds  and  streams, 

At  our  black  sweat  and  toil  you  scoffed 
That  marred  your  idle  dreams. 

"  Qh,  freedom,  what  was  that  to  us" 
(You'd  shout  down  to  us  there), 

"Except  the  freedom  foul,  vicious. 
From  all  of  good  and  fair  ? 

"Obedience, faith,  truth,  chivalry. 

To  us  were  empty  names." — 
The  like  to  you  (might  we  reply) 

Whose  noisy  life  proclaims 


32  To  John   Ruskin 


Presumption,  want  of  human  love, 

Impatience,  filthy  breath,* 
The  snob  in  soul  who  looks  above, 

Trampling  on  what's  beneath. 

When  did  you  strive,  in  nobler  part, 

With  love  and  gentleness, 
To  help  one  soul,  to  win  one  heart 

To  joy  and  hope  and  peace  ? 

Go  to,  vain  Prophet,  without  faith 

In  God  who  maketh  new, 
With  hankerings  for  this  putrid  death, 

This  flesh-feast  of  the  few, 

This  social  structure  of  red  mud, 

This  edifice  of  slime, 
Whose  bricks  are  bones,  whose  mortar's  blood, 

Whose  pinnacle  is  Crime  ! — 

Go  to,  for  we  who  strain  our  power 
For  light  and  warmth  and  scope, 

For  wives',  for  children's  happier  hour, 
Can  teach  you  faith  and  hope. 

Hark  to  the  shout  of  those  who  cleared 

The  Missionary  Ridge ! 
Look  on  those  dead  who  never  feared 

The  battle's  bloody  bridge  ! 

Watch  the  stern  swarm  at  that  last  breach 
March  up  that  came  not  thence — 

And  learn  Democracy  can  teach 
Divine  obedience,  f 


*  His  attack  on  George  Eliot  in  "  Fiction,  Fair  and  Foul,"  in  the 
Nineteenth  Centuryy  for  instance. 

f  The  attack  on  Missionary  Ridge  is  an  example  of  the  brilliant 
initiative,  as  the  holding  of  the  Bloody  Angle  in  the  Wilderness  is  of  the 


To  the  Emperor  William  I     33 

Pass  through  that  South  at  last  brought  low 

Where  loyal  freemen  live, 
And  learn  Democracy  knows  how 

To  utterly  forgive. 

Come  then,  and  take  this  free-given  bread 

Of  us  who've  scarce  enough  ; 
Hush  your  proud  lips,  bow  down  your  head 

And  worship  Human  Love ! 


To  the  Emperor  William  I 


are  at  least  a  Man,  of  men  a  King. 
You  have  a  heart,  and  with  that  heart  you  love. 

The  race  you  come  from  is  not  gendered  of 
The  filthy  sty  whose  latest  litter  cling 
Round  England's  flesh-pots,  gorged  hogs  gluttoning. 

No,  but  on  flaming  battlefields,  in  courts 

Of  honour  and  of  danger  old  resorts, 
The  name  of  Hohen-Zollern  clear  doth  ring. 
O  Father  William,  you,  not  falsely  weak, 

Who  never  spared  the  rod  to  spoil  the  child, 
Our  mighty  Germany,  we  only  speak, 

To  bless  you  with  a  blessing  sweet  and  mild, 
Ere  that  near  heaven  your  weary  footsteps  seek 

Where  love  with  liberty  is  reconciled. 


dauntless  resolution,  of  the  army  of  the  Democracy  of  the  United  States, 
while  the  last  attacks  on  Richmond  were  the  final  exploit  of  the  conqueror 
of  two  combatants,  of  whom  it  is  enough  to  say  that  they  were  worthy  of 
one  another. 


34 


Art 


Song  of  the  Dispossessed 


"TO  JESUS" 


"  r>  E  with  us  by  day,  by  night, 

°  O  lover,  O  friend  ; 
Hold  before  us  thy  light 

Unto  the  end ! 

"  See,  all  these  children  of  ours 

Starved  and  ill-clad. 
Speak  to  thy  heart's  lily-flowers, 

And  make  them  glad  ! 

"  Our  wives  and  daughters  are  here, 
Knowing  wrong  and  shame's  touch  ; 

Bid  them  be  of  good  cheer 
Who  have  loved  much. 

"  And  we,  we  are  robbed  and  oppressed, 

Even  as  thine  were. 
Tell  us  of  comfort  and  rest, 

Banish  despair ! " 

"  Be  with  us  by  day,  by  nighty 

O  lover,  O  friend  ; 
Hold  before  us  thy  light 

Unto  the  end!" 


Art 

VfES,  let  Art  go,  if  it  must  be 
*     That  with  it  men  must  starvt 
If  Music,  Painting,  Poetry 

Spring  from  the  wasted  hearth. 


The  Peasants'  Revolt         35 


Pluck  out  the  flower,  however  fair, 
Whose  beauty  cannot  bloom 

(However  sweet  it  be,  or  rare) 
Save  from  a  noisome  tomb. 

These  social  manners,  charm  and  ease 
Are  hideous  to  who  knows 

The  degradation,  the  disease 
From  which  their  beauty  flows. 

So,  Poet,  must  thy  singing  be ; 

O  Painter,  so  thy  scene  ; 
Musician,  so  thy  melody, 

While  misery  is  queen. 

Nay,  brothers,  sing  us  battle-songs 
With  clear  and  ringing  rhyme  ; 

Nay,  show  the  world  its  hateful  wrongs, 
And  bring  the  better  time  I 


The  Peasants'  Revolt* 

'TPHRO'  the  mists  of  years, 
A     Thro'  the  lies  of  men, 
Your  bloody  sweat  and  tears, 
Your  desperate  hopes  and  fears 
Reach  us  once  again, 


*  Something  like  an  adequate  account  of  this  great  revolution  manquie 
which  in  England  and  1381  went  near  to  anticipating  France  and  1793  has 
at  last  found  its  place  in  the  historians'  pages,  and  Longland  the  poet,  Ball 
the  preacher,  and  Tyler  the  man  of  action,  who  first  raised  for  us  the 
democratic  demand,  can  be  seen  somewhat  as  they  were.  This,  and  more, 
we  owe  to  John  Richard  Green.  An  account  of  the  Revolt  will  be  found 
in  section  4  of  chapter  5  of  his  "  Short  History  of  the  English  People." 
The  phrases  in  verses  3  and  5  were  catchwords  among  the  revolters, 


36        The  Peasants'  Revolt 

Brothers,  who  long  ago, 

For  life's  bitter  sake, 
Toiled  and  suffered  so, 

Robbery,  insult,  blow, 
Rope  and  sword  and  stake  : 

Toiled  and  suffered,  till 

It  burst,  the  brightening  hope, 
"  Might  and  right "  and  "  will  and  skill," 
That  scorned,  and  does,  and  will, 

Sword  and  stake  and  rope  ! 

Wat  and  Jack  and  John, 

Tyler,  Straw,  and  Ball, 
Souls  that  faltered  not, 
Hearts  like  white  iron  hot, 

Still  we  hear  your  call ! 

Yes,  your  "  bell  is  rung," 

Yes,  for  "  now  is  time  !  " 
Come  hither,  every  one, 
Brave  ghosts  whose  day's  not  done, 

Avengers  of  old  Crime, 

Come  and  lead  the  way, 

Hushed,  implacable, 
Suffering  no  delay, 
Forgetting  not  that  day 

Dreadful,  hateful,  fell. 

When  the  liar  King, 

The  liar  Gentlemen, 
Wrought  that  foulest  thing, 
Robbing,  murdering, 

Men  who  trusted  them  !  * 

*  After  dismissing  the  peasants  with  the  formally  written  acknowledg- 
ment of  their  freedom  and  rights,  Richard  II,  with  an  army  of  40,000 
followers,  avenged  himself  and  his  lords  by  ruthless  and  prolonged  massacres 
over  the  whole  country. 


Analogy  37 


Come  and  lead  the  way, 

Hushed,  implacable. 
What  shall  stop  us,  say, 
On  that  day,  our  day  ? — 

Not  unloosened  hell ! 


Analogy 
(To ) 

LJ  AD  you  lived  when  a  tyrant  King 
*•       Strove  to  make  all  the  slaves  of  one, 
With  Nobles  and  with  Churchmen  you 
Had  stood  unflinching,  pure  and  true, 
To  annihilate  that  hateful  thing 

Green  Runnymede  beat  out  of  John  ? 

Had  you  lived  when  a  wanton  crew, 
Flash  scoundrels  of  a  day  outdone, 
Trod  down  the  toilers  birth  derides, 
With  Cromwell  and  his  Ironsides 
The  brave  days  had  discovered  you, 
Where  Naseby  saw  the  Gallants  run  ? 

And  yet  you, — this  same  knight  in  list 
For  Freedom  in  her  narrow  dawn 

Against  that  One,  against  those  Few, 

Vile  King,  vile  Nobles — you,  yet  you 

Stand  by  the  bloody  Capitalist, 

Fight  with  the  pander  Gentleman  ! 


38  A  Street  Fight 

In  Trafalgar  Square 

'HE  stars  shone  faint  through  the  smoky  blue  ; 

The  church-bells  were  ringing  ; 
Three  girls,  arms  laced,  were  passing  through, 
Tramping  and  singing. 

Their  heads  were  bare  :  their  short  skirts  swung 

As  they  went  along  ; 
Their  scarf-covered  breasts  heaved  up,  as  they  sung 

Their  defiant  Song. 

It  was  not  too  clean,  their  feminine  lay, 

But  it  thrilled  me  quite 
With  its  challenge  to  taskmaster  villainous  day 

And  infamous  night, 

With  its  threat  to  the  robber  Rich,  the  Proud, 

The  respectable  Free. 
And  I  laughed  and  shouted  to  them  aloud, 

And  they  shouted  to  me ! 

"  Girls,  that's  the  shout,  the  shout  we  shall  utter 

When,  with  rifles  and  spades, 
We  stand,  with  the  old  Red  Flag  aflutter, 

On  the  barricades !  " 


A  Street  Fight 
(To *) 

G IR,  we  approve  your  curling  lip  and  nose 
^  At  this  vile  sight. 

These  men,  these  women  are  "  brute  beasts  "  ? — Who  knows, 
Sir,  but  that  you  are  right  ? 

*  Who  owns,  and  rack-rents,  some  of  the  vilest  slums  in  London,  and 
is  beautifully  aesthetic  in  private  life. 


Greek  Lyrics  39 


Panders  and  harlots,  rogues  and  thieves  and  worse, 

We  are  a  crew 
Whose  pitiful  plunder's  honoured  in  the  purse 

Of  gentlemen  (like  you), 

Whom  holy  Competition's  taught  (like  us) 
"  What's  thine  is  mine  !  "— 

How  we  must  love  you  who  have  made  us  thus. 
You  may  perhaps  divine  ! 


Greek  Lyrics 

[On  reading  some  Greek  Lyrics  after  several  toilsome 
months  during  which  he  had  not  opened  a  Greek  book] 

C\  WORDS  as  clear  as  are  the  dawn  sky-rifts 

^^   Between  the  still  cloud-layers,  and  eke  as  sweet 

As  violets  are,  looking  through  crystal  dew, 

And  with  such  melody  as  birds  may  have 

That  sing  the  morning  notes  where  peace  and  joy 

Are  mingled  all,  and  every  thought  is  still — 

0  Words,  ye  come  to  me,  a  toiler  here 
With  life-blood  hurrying  thro'  imperilled  veins, 
Ye  come  as  from  a  heaven,  a  heaven  on  earth, 
Wherein  (I  know  not  when)  ye  were  mine  too ! 
Ah  me,  clear  Words,  sweet  Words  melodious, 
Too  long  an  unknown  tongue  are  ye  to  me, 

A  tongue  unknown  too  long  for  peace  and  joy. 
No  heaven  on  earth,  but  ever  earth  on  heaven 

1  pile  and  dwindle  piling.     Pass  away  ; 
For  I  can  linger  not,  nor  ease  my  toil — 
Away,  and  leave  me  with  the  dreadful  night 
And  all  the  sadness  of  the  voiceless  stars  ! 


40        In  an  East  End  Hovel 

In  an  East  End  Hovel 
To  a  Workman,  a  would-be  Suicide 

A/TAN  of  despair  and  death, 

*•         Bought  and  slaved  in  the  gangs, 

Starved  and  stripped  and  left 

To  the  pitiful,  pitiless  night, 

Away  with  your  selfish  thoughts  ! 

Touch  not  your  ignorant  life  ! 

Are  there  no  masters  of  slaves, 

Jeering,  cynical,  strong — 

Are  there  no  brigands  (say), 

With  the  words  of  Christ  on  their  lips, 

And  the  daggers  under  their  cloaks — 

Is  there  not  one  of  these 

That  you  can  steal  on  and  kill  ? 

O  as  the  Swiss  mountaineer 

Dogged  on  the  perilous  heights 

His  disciplined  conqueror  foes  :  * 

Caught  up  one  in  his  arms 

And,  laughing  exultantly, 

Plunged  with  him  to  the  abyss  : 

So  let  it  be  with  you  ! 

An  eye  for  an  eye,  and  a  tooth 

For  a  tooth,  and  a  life  for  a  life ! 

Tell  it,  this  hateful  strong 

Contemptuous,  hypocrite  World, 

Tell  it  that,  if  we  must  live 

As  dogs  and  as  worse  than  dogs, 

At  least  we  can  die  like  men  ! 

Tell  it  there  is  a  woe 

Not  for  the  conquered  alone  !  f 

An  eye  for  an  eye,  and  a  tooth 

For  a  tooth9  and  a  life  for  a  life. 

*  The  French. 

f  "  Va  victis  !  "  woe  to  the  conquered — the  motto  of  the  Gauls  in  Rome 
as  of  the  modern  Civilization  of  Land  and  Capital. 


Dublin  at  Dawn  41 


Dublin  at  Dawn 

T  N  the  chill  grey  summer  dawn-light 

We  pass  through  the  empty  streets  ; 
The  rattling  wheels  are  all  silent ; 
No  friend  his  fellow  greets. 

Here  and  there,  at  the  corners, 

A  man  in  a  great-coat  stands  ; 
A  bayonet  hangs  by  his  side,  and 

A  rifle  is  in  his  hands. 

This  is  a  conquered  city  ; 

It  speaks  of  war  not  peace  ; 
And  that's  one  of  the  English  soldiers 

The  English  call  "police." 

You  see,  at  the  present  moment 

That  noble  country  of  mine 
Is  boiling  with  indignation 

At  the  memory  of  a  "  crime." 

In  a  path  of  the  Phoenix  Park  where 

The  children  romped  and  ran, 
An  Irish  Ruffian  met  his  doom, 

And  an  English  Gentleman. 

For  a  hundred  and  over  a  hundred 

Years  on  the  country  side 
Men  and  women  and  children 

Have  slaved  and  starved  and  died, 

That  those  who  slaved  and  starved  them 
Might  spend  their  earnings  then, 

And  the  Irish  Ruffians  have  a  "  good  time," 
And  the  English  Gentlemen. 


42  The  Caged  Eagle 


For  a  hundred  and  over  a  hundred 

Years,  that  Christian  land 
Has  read  its  Bible  and  looked  at  all  this, 

And  lifted  nor  foot  nor  hand. 

But  still  at  the  present  moment 

This  noble  country  of  mine 
Is  boiling  with  indignation 

At  the  memory  of  this  "  crime." 

For  the  Irish  Ruffians  (they  tell  me, 
And  it  looks  as  if  'twere  true) 

And  the  English  Gentlemen  are  so  scarce, 
We  must  wildly  avenge  these  two. 

In  the  chill  grey  summer  dawn-light 
We  pass  through  the  empty  streets  ; 

The  rattling  wheels  are  all  silent ; 
No  friend  his  fellow  greets. 

Here  and  there  at  the  corners, 
A  man  in  a  great-coat  stands  ; 

A  bayonet  hangs  by  his  side,  and 
A  rifle  is  in  his  hands. 

This  is  a  conquered  city ; 

It  speaks  of  war  not  peace  ; 
And  that's  one  of  the  English  soldiers 

The  English  call  "police." 


The  Caged  Eagle 

...    I  went  the  other  day 
To  see  the  birds  and  beasts  they  keep  enmewed 
In  the  London  Zoo.     One  of  the  first  I  saw — 
One  of  the  first  I  noticed,  was  an  Eagle, 


Ireland  43 


Ragged,  befouled,  within  his  iron  bars 
He  sat  without  a  movement  or  a  sound, 
And,  when  I  stood  and  pitying  looked  at  him, 
I  saw  his  great  sad  eyes  that  winkless  gazed 
Out  to  the  horizon  sky.     I  passed  from  there, 
And  walked  about  the  gardens  hither  and  thither, 
Till  all  the  afternoon  was  spent.     Returning  then 
To  seek  my  home,  again  by  chance  I  passed 
The  Eagle's  cage,  and  stood  again  and  looked, 
And  saw  his  great  sad  eyes  that  winkless  gazed 
Out  to  the  horizon  sky.     So  I  went  home.  .  .  . 
The  Eagle  is  Ireland. 


Ireland 

C\  WE  have  loved  you  through  cold  and  rain 
^-^  And  pitiless  frost, 
Consuming  our  offering  of  blood  and  brain 
Gladly  again  and  again  and  again, 
Though  it  all  seemed  lost, 
Ireland,  Ireland ! 

O  we  will  fight,  fight  on  for  you  till 

Your  anguish  is  past, 

The  wronged  ones  righted,  the  tyrants  still. — 
Though  God  has  not  saved  you,  yet  we  will, 

At  the  last,  at  the  last, 
Ireland,  Ireland ! 

O  we  will  love  you  in  warmth  and  light 

And  the  happy  day, 

When  you  have  forgotten  the  terrible  night, 
Standing  proud  and  beautiful  bright 

For  ever  and  aye, 

Ireland,  Ireland ! 


44  An  "Assassin 


To  Charles  Parnell 


thing  we  praise  you  for  that  is  past  praise  — 
•      The  dauntless  eyes  that  faced  the  rain  and  night, 
The  hand  that  never  wearied  in  the  fight, 

Till,  through  the  dark's  despair,  the  dawn's  delays, 

It  rose,  that  vision  of  forgotten  days, 
Ireland,  a  Nation  in  her  right  and  might, 
As  fearless  of  the  lightning  as  the  Light,  — 

Freedom,  the  noon-tide  sun  that  shines  and  stays  ! 

O  brave,  O  pure,  O  hater  of  the  wrong, 

(The  wrong  that  is  as  one  with  England's  name, 
Tyranny  with  cant  of  liberty,  and  shame 

With  boast  of  righteousness),  to  you  belong 

Trust  for  the  hate  that  blinds  our  foes  like  flame, 

Love  for  the  hope  that  makes  our  hearts  so  strong  ! 


An  "Assassin" 

.  .  .  They  caught  him  at  the  bend.     He  and  his  son 

Sat  in  the  car,  revolvers  in  their  laps. 

From  either  side  the  stone- walled  wintry  road 

There  flashed  thin  fire-streaks  in  the  rainy  dusk. 

The  father  swayed  and  fell,  shot  through  the  chest. 

The  son  was  up,  but  one  more  fire-streak  leaped 

Close  from  the  pitch-black  of  a  thick-set  bush 

Not  five  yards  further  and  lit  all  the  face 

Of  him  whose  sweetheart  walked  the  Dublin  streets 

For  lust  of  him  who  gave  one  yell  and  fell 

Flat  on  the  stony  road  a  sweltering  corse. 


Holy  Russia"  45 


Then  they  came  out,  the  men  who  did  this  thing, 
And  looked  upon  their  hatred's  retribution, 
While  heedlessly  the  rattling  car  fled  on. 
Grey-haired  old  Wolf,  your  letch  for  peasants'  blood, 
For  peasants'  sweat  turned  gold  and  silver  and  bronze, 
Is  done  for  ever,  for  ever  and  ever  is  done ! 

0  foul  young  Fox,  no  more  young  girls'  fresh  lips 
Shall  bruise  and  bleed  to  cool  your  lecher's  lust. 
Slowly  from  out  the  great  high-terraced  clouds 
The  round  moon  sailed.     The  dead  were  left  alone. 

1  talked  with  one  of  those  who  did  this  thing, 
A  coughing  half-starved  lad,  mere  skin  and  bone. 
I  said  :  "  They  found  upon  those  dead  men  gold. 

Why  did  you  not  take  it  ?  "     Then  with  proud-raised  head, 
He  looked  at  me  and  said  :  "  Sorr,  wire  not  thaves !  " 

Brother,  from  up  the  maimed  and  mangled  earth, 
Strewn  with  our  flesh  and  bones,  wet  with  our  bloody 
Let  that  great  Word  go  up  to  unjust  heaven 
And  smite  the  cheek  of  the  Demi  they've  called  "  God  }  " 


"Holy  Russia" 

/CROUCHED  in  the  terrible  land, 
^  The  circle  of  pitiless  ice, 
With  frozen  bloody  feet 
And  her  pestilential  summer's 
Fever-throb  in  her  brow, 
Look,  in  her  deep  slow  eyes 
The  mists  of  her  sleep  of  faith 
Stir,  and  a  gleam  of  light, 
The  ray  of  a  blood-red  sun, 
Beams  out  into  the  dusk. 


46  "  Holy  Russia 


From  far  away,  from  the  west, 

From  the  east,  from  the  south,  there  come 

Faint  sweet  breaths  of  the  breeze 

Of  plenteous  warmth  and  light. 

And  she  moves,  and  around  her  neck 

She  feels  the  iron-scaled  Snake 

Whose  fangs  suck  at  the  heart 

Hid  by  her  tattered  dress, 

By  her  lean  and  hanging  teat. 

Russia,  O  land  of  Faith, 

O  realm  of  the  ageless  Slav, 

O  oppressed  one  of  eternity, 

This  darkest  hour  is  the  hour, 

The  hour  of  the  coming  dawn  ! 

Europe,  the  rank,  the  corrupt, 

Lies  stretched  out  at  your  feet. 

Turkey,  India,  lo  all, 

East  and  south,  it  is  yours ! 

Years,  years  ago  a  Nation,* 
Oppressed  as  you  are  oppressed, 
Burst  her  bonds  and  leaped  out, 
A  volcanic  sea- wave  of  fire, 
Quenched  at  last  but  in  blood, 
Though  not  before  the  red  spray 
Dashed  the  Pyramids,  the  Escurial, 
Rome,  and  your  own  grey  Kremlin. 
That  was  the  great  sea-wave 
Of  a  nation  that  disbelieved, 
Of  a  nation  that  had  not  faith  ! 
What  shall  the  sea-wave  be, 
Of  this  race  of  eternal  belief, 
This  nation  of  passionate  faith? 


France. 


I 


Aux  Ternes  47 

P£re-la-Chaise  * 

(PARIS) 
STOOD  in  P£re-la-Chaise.     The  putrid  City, 


Paris,  the  harlot  of  the  nations,  lay, 
The  bug-bright  thing  that  knows  not  love  nor  pity, 
Flashing  her  bare  shame  to  the  summer's  day. 

Here  where  I  stand,  they  slew  you,  brothers,  whom 
Hell's  wrongs  unutterable  had  made  as  mad. 

The  rifle  shots  re-echoed  in  his  tomb, 

The  gilded  scoundrel's  who  had  been  so  glad.     , 

O  Morny,  O  blood-sucker  of  thy  race — 

O  brain,  O  hand  that  wrought  out  empire  that 

The  lust  in  one  for  power,  for  tinsel  place, 

Might  rest ;  one  lecher's  hungry  heart  grow  fat — 

Is  it  for  nothing,  now  and  evermore, 

O  you  whose  sin  in  life  had  death  in  ease, 

The  murder  of  your  victims  beats  the  door 
Wherein  your  careless  carrion  lies  at  peace  ? 


Aux  Ternes  f 

(PARIS) 

SHE. — "  Up  and  down,  up  and  down. 

From  early  eve  to  early  day. 
Life  is  quicker  in  the  town  ; 
When  you've  leisure,  anyway  ! 

*  In  Pere-la-Chaise,  the  famous  Parisian  cemetery,  the  Communists 
made  a  desperate  stand,  but  were  overcome  and  the  captured  ones  shot. 
And  Morny's  vaulted  tomb  was  close  at  hand,  and  Balzac  smiled  his 
animal  cynicism  from  his  bust.  Victims,  Murderer,  and  commenting 
Chorus,  all  were  there. 

f  A  part  of  Paris, 


48  Aux  Ternes 

"  Down  and  up,  down  and  up  ! 

O  will  no  one  stop  and  speak  ? 
I  am  fain  to  eat  and  sup, 

All  my  limbs  are  heavy  and  weak. 

"  What's  my  price,  sirs  ?     Vm  no  Jew. 

If  with  me  you  wish  to  sleep, 
'Tis  five  francs,  sirs.     Surely  you 
Will  admit  that  that  Is  cheap  ?  " 

HE. — "  Christ,  if  you  are  not  stone  blind, 
Stone  deaf  also,  you  know  it  is 
Christian  towns  leave  far  behind 
Sodom  and  those  other  cities. 

"  Bid  your  Father  strike  this  town, 

Wipe  it  utterly  away  ! 
Weary,  hungry,  up  and  down 
From  early  eve  to  early  day  ? 

"  Magdalen  knew  nought  like  this ; 
She  had  food  and  roof  above  ; 
Seven  devils,  too,  did  she  possess  ; 
This  poor  soul  had  but  one — love ! 

THE  OTHER. — "  No,  Christ  is  not  deaf  nor  blind; 

He's  but  dust  in  Syrian  ground, 
And  his  Father  has  declined 
To  a  parson's  phrase,  a  sound. 

"  Not  by  such,  then,  but  by  us 

These  hell-wrongs  must  be  redressed 
Take  this  morsel  venomous : 
Nourish  it  within  your  breast. 

"  You  must  live  on,  live  and  hate  ; 

Conquer  wrath,  despair  and  pain  ; 
For  *  we  bid  you  hope '  and  wait 
Till  the  Red  Flag  flies  again: 


The  Truth  49 

"  Till  once  more  the  People  rise, 

Once  more,  once  and  only  once, 
Blood-red  hands  and  blazing  eyes 
Of  the  robbed  and  murdered  ones !  " 


The  Truth 

then,  let  us  at  least  know  what's  the  truth. 
^•^   Let  us  not  blink  our  eyes  and  say 
We  did  not  understand  ;  old  age  or  youth 
Benumbed  our  sense  or  stole  our  sight  away. 

It  is  a  lie — just  that,  a  lie — to  declare 

That  Wages  are  the  worth  of  Work. 
No  ;  they  are  what  the  Employer  wills  to  spare 

To  let  the  Employee  sheer  starvation  shirk. 

They're  the  life-pittance  Competition  leaves, 
The  least  for  which  brother'll  slay  brother. 

He  who  the  fruits  of  this  hell-strife  receives, 
He  is  a  thief,  an  assassin,  and  none  other. 

It  is  a  lie — just  that,  a  lie — to  declare 

That  Rent's  the  interest  on  just  gains. 
Rent's  the  thumb-screw  that  makes  the  worker  share 

With  him  who  worked  not  the  produce  of  his  pains. 

Rent's  the  wise  tax  the  human  tape-worm  knows. 

The  fat  he  takes  ;  the  life-lean  leaves. 
The  holy  Landlord  is,  as  we  suppose, 

Just  this — the  model  of  assassin-thieves  ! 

What  is  the  trick  the  Rich-man,  then,  contrives  ? 

How  play  my  lords  their  brilliant  roles  ? — 
'They  live  on  the  plunder  of  our  toiling  lives, 

The  degradation  of  our  bodies  and  souls  / 


50       To  the  Sons  of  Labour 


London 

City,  London,  London, 
^  Where,  duped  slaves  of  devils'  creeds, 
Men  and  women  desperate,  undone, 

Dream  such  dreams,  and  do  such  deeds  : 

London,  London,  cruel  city, 

By  day  serpent,  by  night  vampire — 

God,  in  thy  great  pity,  pity, 

Give  us  light — though  it  be  fire  ! 


Post-Mortem 

I)  URY  me  with  clenched  hands 
•^  And  eyes  open  wide, 
For  in  storm  and  struggle  I  lived, 
And  in  struggle  and  storm  I  died, 


To  the  Sons  of  Labour 

/^  RAVE  this  deep  in  your  hearts, 

^-*    Forget  not  the  tale  of  the  past ! 

Never,  never  believe 

That  any  will  help  you,  or  can, 

Saving  only  Yourselves ! 

What  have  the  Gentlemen  done, 

Peerless  haters  of  wrong, 

Byrons  and  Shelleys,  what  ? 

They  stand  great  famous  Names, 

Demi-gods  to  their  own, 

Shadows  far  off,  alien 

To  us  and  ours  for  ever. 


To  the  Sons  of  Labour       51 

Those  who  love  them  and  hate 

The  crime,  the  injustice  they  hated, 

What  can  they  do  but  shout, 

Win  a  name  from  our  woes, 

And  leave  us  just  as  we  were  ? 

No,  but  resolutely  turned, 

Our  wants,  our  desires  made  clear, 

And  clear  the  means  that  shall  win  them, 

Drill  and  drill  and  drill ! 

Then  when  the  day  is  come, 

When  the  royal  battleflag's  up, 

When  blood  has  been  spilled  in  vain 

In  timid  half-hearted  war, 

Then  let  the  Cromwell  rise, 

The  simple,  the  true-souled  Man  ; 

Then  let  Grant  come  forth, 

The  calm,  the  determined  Comrade, 

But  deep  in  their  hearts  one  hate, 

Deep  in  their  souls  one  thought, 

To  bring  the  Iniquity  low, 

To  make  the  People  free ! 

Ah,  for  such  as  these, 

We  with  the  same  heart-hate, 

We  with  the  same  soul-thought, 

Will  fall  to  our  destined  places 

In  the  ranks  of  the  Great  New  Model,  * 

In  the  Army  that  sees  ahead 

Marston,  Naseby,  Whitehall, 

The  Wilderness,  Petersburg — yes, 

But  beyond  the  blood  and  the  smoke, 

Beyond  the  struggle  and  death, 

The  Union  victorious  safe, 

The  Commonwealth  glorious  free ! 


*  The  New  Model  is  the  name  by  which  is  known  that  reorganization 
of  the  Roundhead  Army,  without  which  Cromwell  saw  that  the  Cavaliers 
could  not  be  conquered.  No  one  was  permitted  in  its  ranks  who  did  not 
thoroughly  believe  in  the  Cause  for  which  it  fought. 


52  To  an  Artist 


To  an  Artist 

VTOIJ  tell  me  these  great  lords  have  raised  up  Art  ? 

I  say  they  have  degraded  it.      Look  you, 
When  ever  did  they  let  the  Poet  sing, 
The  Painter  paint,  the  Sculptor  hew  and  cast, 
The  Music  raise  her  heavenly  voice,  except 
To  praise  them  and  their  wretched  rule  o'er  men  ? 
Behold  our  English  poets  that  were  poor 
Since  these  great  lords  were  rich  and  held  the  state  : 
Behold  the  glories  of  the  German  land, 
Poets,  Musicians,  driven,  like  them,  to  death 
Unless  they'd  tune  their  spirits'  harps  to  play 
Drawing-room  pieces  for  the  chattering  fools 
Who  aped  the  taste  for  Art  or  for  a  leer. 
I  say,  no  Art  was  ever  noble  yet, 
Noble  and  high,  the  speech  of  godlike  men, 
When  fetters  bound  it,  be  they  gold  or  flowers. 
All  that  is  noblest,  highest,  greatest,  best, 
Comes  from  the  Galilean  peasant's  hut,  comes  from 
The  Stratford  village,  the  Ayrshire  plough,  the  shop 
That  gave  us  Chaucer,  the  humble  Milton's  trade — 
Bach's,  Mozart's,  great  Beethoven's — and  these  are  they 
Who  knew  the  People,  being  what  they  knew  1 
Wherefore,  if  in  the  future  years  no  strain, 
No  picture  of  earth's  glory  like  to  what 
Your  Artists  raised  for  that  small  clique  or  this 
Of  supercilious  imbecilities — 
O  if  no  better  demi-gods  of  Art 
Can  rise  save  those  whose  barbarous  tinsel  yet 
Makes  hideous  all  the  beauty  of  old  homes — 
Then  let  us  seek  the  comforts  of  despair 
In  democratic  efforts  dead  and  gone  ; 
Weep  with  Pheideian  Athens,  sigh  an  hour 
With  Raffaelle's  Florence,  beat  the  head  and  breast 
O'er  Shakspere's  England  that  from  Milton's  took 
In  lips  the  name  that  leaped  from  lead  and  flame 
From  out  her  heart  against  the  Spanish  guns  ! 


One  among  so  Many         53 


One  among  so  Many 

...  In  a  dark  street  she  met  and  spoke  to  me, 

Importuning,  one  wet  and  mild  March  night. 

We  walked  and  talked  together.     O  her  tale 

Was  very  common  ;  thousands  know  it  all ! 

"  Seduced  "  ;  a  gentleman  ;  a  baby  coming  ; 

Parents  that  railed  ;   London  ;  the  child  born  dead  ; 

A  seamstress  then,  one  of  some  fifty  girls 

"  Taken  on  "  a  few  months  at  a  dressmaker's 

In  the  crush  of  the  "  season  "  at  ten  shillings  a  week  ! 

The  fashionable  people's  dresses  done, 

And  they  flown  off,  these  fifty  extra  girls 

Sent — to  the  streets  :  that  is,  to  work  that  gives 

Scarcely  enough  to  buy  the  decent  clothes 

Respectable  employers  all  demand 

Or  speak  dismissal.     Well,  well,  well,  we  know ! 

And  she — "  Why,  1  have  gone  on  down  and  down, 

And  there's  the  gutter,  look,  that  I  shall  die  in  /  " 

"  My  dear,"  I  say,  "  where  hope  of  all  but  that 

Is  gone,  'tis  time,  I  think,  life  were  gone  too." 

She  looks  at  me.     "  That  I  should  kill  myself!  " 

"  That  you  should  kill  yourself." — "  That  would  be  sin, 

And  God  would  punish  me  !  " — "And  will  not  God 

Punish  for  this  ?  "     She  pauses  ;  then  whispers  : 

"No,  no,  He  zvill  forgive  me,  for  He  knows/" 

I  laughed  aloud  :  "  And  you,"  she  said,  "  and  you, 

Who  are  so  good,  so  noble  "  .  .  .  «  Noble  ?     Good  ?  " 

I  laughed  aloud,  the  great  sob  in  my  throat. 

O  my  poor  Darling,  O  my  little  lost  Sheep 

Of  this  vast  flock  that  perishes  alone 

Out  in  the  pitiless  desert ! — Yet  she'd  speak  : 

She'd  ask  me  :  she'd  entreat :  she'd  demonstrate. 

O  I  must  not  say  that !     I  must  believe  ! 

Who  made  the  sea,  the  leaves  so  green,  the  sky 

So  big  and  blue  and  pure  above  it  all  ? 


54      The  New  Locksley  Hall 

O  my  poor  Darling,  O  my  little  lost  Sheep, 

Entreat  no  more  and  demonstrate  no  more ; 

For  I  believe  there  is  a  God,  a  God 

Not  in  the  heaven,  the  earth,  or  the  waters  ;  no, 

But  in  the  heart  of  Man,  on  the  dear  lips 

Of  angel  Women,  of  heroic  Men ! 

O  hopeless  Wanderer  that  would  not  stay, 

("  //  is  too  latC)  I  cannot  rise  again  I ") 

O  Saint  of  faith  in  love  behind  the  veils, 

("  You  must  believe  in  God,  for  you  are  good  !"} 

O  Sister  who  made  holy  with  your  kiss, 

Your  kiss  in  that  wet  dark  mild  night  of  March, 

There  in  the  hideous  infamous  London  streets, 

My  cheek,  and  made  my  soul  a  sacred  place, 

O  my  poor  Darling,  O  my  little  lost  Sheep ! 


The  New  Locksley  Hall 
"  Forty  Years  After  " 

/COMRADE,  yet  a  little  further  I  would  go  before  the  night 
^  Closes  round  and  chills  in  darkness  all  the  glorious  sunset 

light- 
Yet  a  little,  by  the  cliff  there,  till  the  stately  home  I  see 
Of  the  man  who  once  was  with  us,  comrade  once  with  you  and  me ! 
Nay,  but  leave  me,  pass  alone  there  ;  stay  awhile  and  gaze  again 
On  the  various-jewelled  waters  and  the  dreamy  southern  main, 
For  the  evening  breeze  is  sighing  in  the  quiet  of  the  hills, 
Moving  down  in  cliff  and  terrace  to  the  singing  sweet  sea-rills, 
While  the  river,  silent-stealing,  thro*  the  copse  and  thro'  the  lea 
Winds  her  waveless  way  eternal  to  the  welcome  of  the  sea. 

Yes,  within  that  green-clad  homestead,  gardened  grounds  and 

velvet  ease 
Of  a  home  where  culture  reigneth  and  the  chambers  whisper 

peace, 


The  New  Locksley  Hall      55 

Is  the  Man,  the  Seer  and   Singer,  who  (ah,  years  and  years 

away !) 

Lifted  up  a  face  of  gladness  at  the  breaking  of  the  day. 
For  the  noontide's  desperate  ardours  that  had  seen  the  Roman 

town 
Wrap  the   boy   Keats,   "by  the   hungry  generations   trodden 

down," 

In  his  death-shroud  with  the  ashes  of  the  fairy  Child  of  Storm, 
Fluttering  skylark  in  the  breakers,  caught  and  smothered  by  the 

foam, 

And  had  closed  those  eyes  heroic,  weary  for  the  final  peace, 
Byron  maimed  and  maddened,  strangled  in  the  anguish  that  was 

Greece — 
For  this  noontide  passed  to  darkness,  brooding  doubt  and  wild 

dismay, 
Where  the  silly  sparrows  chirruped   and  the  eagles  swooped 

away, 
Till  once  more  the  trampled  Peoples  and  the  murdered  soul  of 

Man 
Raised  a  haggard  face  half-wondering  where  the  new-born  Day 

began, 
Where  the  sign  of  Faith's  renewal,  Faith's  and  Hope's,  and 

Love's,  outgrew 
In  the  golden  sun  arising  ;  and  we  hailed  it,  we  and  you  ! 

O  you  hailed  it,  and  your  heart  beat,  and  your  pretty  woman's 

lays, 

In  the  fathomless  vibration  of  our  rapturous  amaze, 
Died  for  ever  on  your  harpstrings,  and  you  rose  and  struck  a 

chord 

High,  full,  clear,  heroic,  godlike,  "for  the  glory  of  the  Lord  !  " 
Noble  words  you  spoke  ;  we  listened  ;  and  we  dreamed  the 

day  had  come 
When  the  faith  of  God  and  Christ  should  sound  one  cry  with 

Man's  freedom — 
When  the  men  who  stood  beside  us,  eager  with  hell's  troops  to 

cope, 
Radiant,    thrilled    exultant,    proud,    with  the   magnificence  of 

hope ! 


56      The  New  Locksley  Hall 

"  Forward !  forward  !  "  ran  our  watchword.     "  Forward  !  for- 
ward !  "  by  our  side 
You  gave  back  the  glorious  summons.     Would  that  day  that 

you  had  died ! 
Better  lying  fallen,  death-struck,  breathless,  bleeding,  on  your 

face, 
With  your  bright  sword  pointing  onward,  dying  happy  in  your 

place ! 

Better  to  have  passed  in  spirit  from  the  battle-storm's  eclipse 
With  the  great  Cause  in  your  heart  and  with  the  war-shout  on 

your  lips ! 

Better  to  have  fallen  charging,  having  known  the  nobler  time, 
In  the  fiery  cheer  and  impulse  of  our  serried  battle-line — 
Than  to  stand  and  watch  your  comrades,  in  the  hail  of  fire  and 

lead, 
Up  the  slopes  and  thro'  the  smoke-clouds,  thro'  the  dying  and 

the  dead, 
Till  the  sun  strikes  through  a  moment,  to  our  one  victorious 

shout, 
On  our  bayonets  bristling  brightly  as  we  carry  the  redoubt ! 

O  half-hearted,  pusillanimous,  faltering  heart  and  fuddled  brain 
That  remembered    Egypt's    flesh-pots,   and    turned  back    and 

dreamed  again — 

Left  the  plain  of  blood  and  battle  for  the  quiet  of  the  hills, 
And  the  sunny  soft   contentment  that   the  woody  homestead 

fills. 

There  you  sat  and  sang  of  Egypt,  of  its  sober  solid  graves, 
(Pyramids,  you  call  them,  Sphinxes),  mortared  with  the  blood 

of  slaves, 

Houses,  streets  and  stately  palaces,  the  mart,  the  regal  stew 
Where  freedom  "  broadens  down  "  so  slow  it  stops  with  lords 

and  you  ! 

O  you  mocked  at  our  confusion,  O  you  told  us  of  our  crimes, 
Us  ungentle,  not  like  wamors  of  the  sweet  idyllic  times, 
Flowers  of  eunuch-hearted  kings  and  courts  where  pretty  poet 

knights 
Tilted  gaily,  or  slew  stake-armed  peasants,  hundreds,  in  the 

fights  ? 


The  New  Locksley  Hall      57 

O  you  drew  the  hideous  picture  of  our  bravest  and  our  best, 
Patient  martyrs,  desperate  swordsmen,  for  the  Cause  that  gives 

not  rest — 

Men  of  science,  "vivisectors!"  democrats,  the  "rout  of  beasts" — 
Writers,    essayists    and    poets,    "  Belial's    prophets,    Moloch's 

priests ! " 
Coward,  you  have  made  the  great  refusal !  you  have  won  the 

gilded  praise 
Of  the  wringers  of  his  heart's-blood  from  the  peasant's  sunless 

days, 
Of  the  Lord  and  the  Land-owner,  of  the  Rich-man  who  has 

bound 
Labour  on  the  wheel  to  break  him,  strew  his  rent  limbs  on  the 

ground, 

With  a  vulture  eye  aglare  on  brothers,  sisters  that  he  had, 
Crying  "Troops  and  guns  to  shoot  them,  if  the  hunger  drive 

them  mad ! " 

Coward,  faithless,  unbelieving,  that  had  courage  but  to  take 
What  of  pleasure  and  of  beauty  men  have  won  for  manhood's 

sake, 

Blustering  long  and  loudest  at  the  hideousness  and  pain 
These  you  praise  have  brought  upon  us  ;  blustering  long  and  loud 

again 

At  our  agony  and  anguish  in  this  desperate  fight  of  ours, 
Grappling   with    anarch    custom    and    the    darkness    and    the 

powers ! 

O  begone,  then,  from  among  us !     Echo  not,  however  faint, 
Our  great  watch-word,  our  great  war-shout,  sweet  and  sickly 

poet  saint ! 

Sit  there  dreaming  in  your  gardens,  looking  out  upon  the  sea, 
Till  the  night-time  closes  round  you  and  the  wind  is  on  the 

lea. 

Enter  then  within  your  chambers  in  the  rich  and  quiet  light : 
Never  think  of  us  who  struggle  in  the  tempest  and  the  night. 
Soothe  your  fancy  with  your  visions  ;  bend  a  gracious  senile 

ear 
To  the  praise  your  guests  are  murmuring  in  the  tone  you  love  to 

hear. 


58      The  New  Locksley  Hall 

Honoured  of  your  Queen,  and  honoured  of  the  gentlest  and  the 

best, 
Lord  and  commoner  and  rich-man,  smirking  tenant,  shopman, 

priest, 
All  distinguished  and  respectable,  the  seamy  sons  of  light, 

0  what,  O  what  are  these  who  call  you  coward  in  the  night  ? 
Ay,  what  are  we  who  struggled  for  the  cause  of  Science,  say, 
Darwin,  Huxley,  Spencer,  Haeckel,  marshalling  our  stern  array  ? 
We  who  raised  the  cry  for  Culture,  Goethe's  spirit  leading  on, 
Marching  gladly  with  our  captains,  Renan,  Arnold,  Emerson  ? 
We,  we  are  not  tinkers,  tinkers  of  the  kettle  cracked  and  broke, 
Tailors  squatted  cross-legged,  patching  at  the  greasy,  worn-out 

cloak ! 
We  are  those  that  faced  mad  Fortune,  cried  :  "The  Truth  and 

only  she ! 

Onward,  upward  !     If  we  perish,  we  at  least  will  perish  free  !  " 
We  have  lost  our  souls  to  win  them,  in  the  house  and  in  the 

street 

Falling  stabbed  and  poisoned,  making  a  victory  of  defeat. 
We  have  lost  life's  happy  present,  we  have  paid  death's  heavy 

debt, 
We  have  won,  have  won  the  Future,  and  its  sons  shall  not 

forget ! 

Enter,  then,  within  your  chamber  in  the  rich  and  quiet  light : 
Never  think  of  us  who  struggle  in  the  tempest  and  the  night ; 
Spread  your  nostrils  to  the  incense,  hearken  to  the  murmured 

hymn 

Of  the  praising  people,  rising  from  the  temple  fair  and  dim. 
Ah,  but  we  here  in  the  tempest,   we  here  struggling  in  the 

night, 
See   the  worshippers    out-stealing ;    see    the    temple    emptying 

quite  ; 
See  the  godhead  turning  ghostlike ;  see  the  pride  of  name  and 

fame 

Paling  slowly,  sad  and  sickly,  with  forgetfulness  and  shame  !  .  .  . 
Darker,  darker  grows  the  night  now,  louder,  louder  howls  the 

wind  ; 

1  can  hear  the  dash  of  breakers  and  the  deep  sea  moves  behind, 


Farewell  to  the  Market       59 

I  can  see  the  foam-capped  phalanx  rushing  on  the  crumbling 

shore, 

Slowly  but  surely  shattering  its  rampart  evermore. 
Hark  !  my  comrade's  voice  is  calling,  and  his  solitary  cry 
On    the  great    dark    swift  air-currents   like    Fate's    summons 

sweepeth  by. 

Farewell,  then,  whom  once  I  loved  so,  whom  a  boy  I  thrilled  to 

hear 

Urging  courage  and  reliance,  loathing  acquiescent  fear. 
I  must  leave  you  ;  I  must  wander  to  a  strange  and  distant  land, 
Facing  all  that  Fate  shall  give  me  with  her  hard  unequal  hand — 
I  once  more  anew  must  face  them,  toil  and  trouble  and  disease, 
But  these  a  man  may  face  and  conquer,  for  there  waits  him  death 

and  peace 

And  the  freedom  from  dishonour  and  denial  e'er  confessed 
Of  what  he  knows  is  truest,  what  most  beautiful  and  best ! 
O  farewell,  then  !  I  must  leave  you.  You  have  chosen.  You 

are  right. 
You  have  made  the  great  refusal ;  you  have  shunned  the  wind 

and  night, 
You  have  won  your  soul,  and  won  it — No,  not  lost  it  as  they 

tell— 
Happy,  blest  of  gods  and  monarchs,  O  a  long,  a  long  farewell ! 

Freshwater,  Isle  of  Wight. 


Farewell  to  the  Market 
"Susannah  and  Mary- Jane" 

HP  WO  little  Darlings  alone, 

Clinging  hand  in  hand  ; 
Two  little  Girls  come  out 
To  see  the  wonderful  land ! 


60       Farewell  to  the  Market 

Here  round  the  flaring  stalls 

They  stand  wide-eyed  in  the  throng, 

While  the  great,  the  eloquent  Huckster 
Perorates  loud  and  long. 

They  watch  those  thrice-blessed  mortals, 

The  dirty  guzzling  Boys, 
Who  partake  of  dates,  periwinkles, 

Ices  and  other  joys. 

And  their  little  mouths  go  wide  open 
At  some  of  the  brilliant  sights 

That  little  Darlings  may  see  in  the  road 
Of  Edgware  on  Saturday  nights. 

The  eldest's  name  is  Susannah  ; 

She  was  four  years  old  last  May. 
And  Mary-Jane,  the  youngest, 

Is  just  three  years  old  to-day. 

And  I  know  all  about  their  cat,  and 
Their  father  and  mother  too, 

And  "  Pigshead,"  their  only  brother, 
Who  got  his  head  jammed  in  the  flue. 

And  they  know  several  particulars 

Of  a  similar  sort  of  me, 
For  we  went  up  and  down  together 

For  over  an  hour,  we  three. 

And  Susannah  walked  beside  me, 
As  became  the  wiser  and  older, 

Fast  to  one  finger,  but  Mary- Jane 
Sat  solemnly  up  on  my  shoulder. 

And  we  bought  some  sweets,  and  a  monkey 
That  climbed  up  a  stick  "  quite  nice." 

And  then  last  we  adjourned  for  refreshments, 
And  the  ladies  had  each  an  ice. 


Farewell  to  the  Market       61 

And  Susannah's  ice  was  a  pink  one, 

And  she  sucked  it  up  so  quick, 
But  Mary-Jane  silently  proffered 

Her  ice  to  me  for  a  lick. 

And  then  we  went  home  to  Mother, 

And  we  found  her  upon  the  floor, 
And  Father  was  trying  to  balance 

His  shoulders  against  the  door. 

And  Susannah  said  "  O  "  and  "  Please,  sir, 

We'll  go  in  ourselves,  sir  !  "     And 
We  kissed  one  another  and  parted, 

And  they  stole  in  hand  in  hand. 

And  its  O  for  my  two  little  Darlings 

I  never  shall  see  again, 
Though  I  stand  for  the  whole  night  watching 

And  crying  here  in  the  rain ! 


II.   Here  and  There 


England  in  Egypt 

U*ROM  the  dusty  jaded  sunlight  of  the  careless  Cairo  streets, 
•*•     Through  the  open  bedroom  window  where  the  pale  blue 

held  the  palms, 
There  came  a  sound  of  music,  thrilling  cries  and  rattling  beats, 

That  startled  me  from  slumber  with  a  shock  of  sweet  alarms. 
For  beneath  this  rainless  heaven  with  this  music  in  my  ears 

I  was  born,  and  all  my  boyhood  with  its  joy  was  glorified, 
And  for  me  the  ranging  Red-coats  hold  a  passion  of  bright 
tears, 

And  the  glancing  of  the  bayonets  lights  a  hell  of  savage  pride. 

So  I  leaped  and  ran,  and  looked, 

And  I  stood,  and  listened  there, 
Till  I  heard  the  fifes  and  drums, 
Till  I  heard  the  fifes  and  drums, 
The  fifes  and  drums  of  England 

Thrilling  all  the  alien  air  ! — 
And  "  England,  England,  England," 

I  heard  the  wild  fifes  cry, 
"  We  are  here  to  rob  for  England, 

And  to  throttle  liberty  !  " 
And  "  England,  England,  England," 

I  heard  the  fierce  drums  roar, 
"  We  are  tools  for  pious  swindlers 

And  brute  bullies  evermore  !  " 

62 


England  in  Egypt  63 

And  the  silent  Arabs  crowded,  half-defiant,  half-dismayed. 

And  the  jaunty  fifers  fifing  flung  their  challenge  to  the  breeze, 
And  the   drummers    kneed   their    drums   up  as    the    reckless 

drumsticks  played, 
And  the  Tommies  all  came  trooping,  tripping,  slouching  at 

their  ease. 
Ah  Christ,  the  love  I  bore  them  for  their  brave  hearts  and  strong 

hands — 
Ah!    Christ,  the  hate  that  smote  me  for  their  stupid  dull 

conceits — 
I  know  not  which  was  greater,  as  I  watched  their  conquering 

bands 
In  the  dusty  jaded  sunlight  of  the  sullen  Cairo  streets. 

And  my  dream  of  love  and  hate 

Surged,  and  broke,  and  gathered  there, 
As  I  heard  the  fifes  and  drums, 
As  I  heard  the  fifes  and  drums, 
The  fifes  and  drums  of  England 

Thrilling  all  the  alien  air  ! — 
And  "  Tommy,  Tommy,  Tommy," 

I  heard  the  wild  fifes  cry, 
"  Will  you  never  know  the  England 

For  which  men,  not  fools,  should  die  ?  " 
And  "  Tommy,  Tommy,  Tommy," 

I  heard  the  fierce  drums  roar, 
"  Will  you  always  be  a  cut-throat 

And  a  slave  for  evermore  ?  " 


No,  I  shall  never  see  it  with  these  weary  death-dim  eyes, 

The  hour  of  Retribution,  the  hour  of  Fate's  desire, 
When  before  the  outraged  millions,  as  at  last — at  last  they  rise, 

The  rogues  and  thieves  of  England  are  as  stubble  to  the  fire  ! 
When  the  gentlemen  of  England,  eaten  out  with  lust  and  sin, 

When  the  shop-keepers  of  England,  sick  with  godly  greed 

as  well, 
Face  the  Red-coats  and  the  Red-shirts,  as  the  steel-ring  closes  in 

And  hurls  them,  howling  madly,  down  the  precipice  of  hell ! 


64  In  the  Pit 

But  O,  I  {new,  that  hour, 

Standing  sick  and  dying  there, 
As  I  heard  the  fifes  and  drums, 
As  I  heard  the  fifes  and  drums, 
The  fifes  and  drums  of  England 

Thrilling  all  the  alien  air ! 
And  "  Tommy,  Tommy,  Tommy," 

I  heard  the  wild  fifes  cry, 
"  It  is  time  to  cease  your  fooling  ; 

It  is  time  to  do  or  die !  " 
And  "  Johnnie,  Johnnie,  Johnnie," 

I  heard  the  fierce  drums  roar, 
"  It  is  time  to  break  your  fetters 

And  be  free  for  evermore !  " 


In  the  Pit 

"  Chant  of  the  Firemen  " 

"  HpHIS  is  the  steamer's  pit. 

"*•     The  ovens  like  dragons  of  fire 
Glare  thro'  their  close-lidded  eyes 
With  restless  hungry  desire. 

"  Down  from  the  tropic  night 
Rushes  the  funnelled  air  ; 
Our  heads  expand  and  fall  in  ; 
Our  hearts  thump  huge  as  despair. 

"  'Tis  we  make  the  bright  hot  blood 

Of  this  throbbing  inanimate  thing  ; 
And  our  life  is  no  less  the  fuel 

Than  the  coal  we  shovel  and  fling. 

"  And  lest  of  this  we  be  proud 

Or  anything  but  meek, 
We  are  well  cursed  and  paid — 
Ten  shillings  a  week  !  " 


To  India  65 


round)  round  In  Its  tunnel 
The  Shaft  turns  pitiless  strong. 
While  lost  souls  cry  out  in  the  darkness  : 
"How  long)  O  Lord)  how  long?  " 


A  Mahomedan  Ship  Fireman 

T  TP  from  the  oven  pit, 

^^    The  hell  where  poor  men  toil, 

At  the  sunset  hour  he  comes 

Clean-clothed,  washed  from  soil. 

On  the  fo'c's'le  head  he  kneels, 
His  face  to  the  hallowed  West. 

He  prays,  and  bows  and  prays. 
Does  he  pray  for  death  and  rest  ? 


To  India 

r\  INDIA,  India,  O  my  lovely  land— 

^•^  At  whose  sweet  throat  the  greedy  English  Snake, 

With  fangs  and  lips  that  suck  and  never  slake, 
Clings,  while  around  thee,  band  by  stifling  band, 

The  loathsome  Shape  twists,  chaining  foot  and  hand — 
O  from  this  death-swoon  must  thou  never  wake, 
From  limbs  enfranchised  these  foul  fetters  to  shake, 

And,  proud  among  the  nations,  to  rise  and  stand  ? 

Nay,  but  thine  eyes,  thine  eyes,  wherein  there  stays 
The  patience  of  that  august  Faith  that  scorns 

The  tinsel  creed  of  Christ,  dream  still  and  gaze, 

Where,  not  within  the  timeless  east  and  haze, 
The  haunt  of  that  wan  moon  with  fading  horns, 
There  breaks  the  first  of  Himalayan  morns  ! 


66  To  England 

To  England 


'  I  'HERE  was  a  time  when  all  thy  sons  were  proud 
•*•     To  speak  thy  name, 
England,  when  Europe  echoed  back  aloud 
Thy  fearless  fame  : 

When  Spain  reeled  shattered  helpless  from  thy  guns 

And  splendid  ire, 
When  from  Canadian  snows  to  Indian  suns 

Pitt's  soul  was  fire. 

O  that  in  days  like  these  were,  fair  and  free 

From  shame  and  scorn, 
Fate  had  allowed,  benignly,  pityingly 

That  I  was  born  ! 

O  that,  if  struck,  then  struck  with  glorious  wounds, 

1  bore  apart 
(Not  torn  with  fangs  of  leprous  coward  hounds) 

My  bleeding  heart ! 


We  hate  You — not  because  of  cruel  deeds 
Staining  a  glorious  effort.     They  who  live 
Learn  in  this  earth  to  give  and  to  forgive, 

Where  heart  and  soul  are  noble  and  fate's  needs 

Imperious  :  No,  nor  yet  that  cruel  seeds 

Of  power  and  wrong  you've  sown  alternative, 
We  hate  You,  we  your  sons  who  yet  believe 

That  truth  and  justice  are  not  empty  creeds ! 


To  England  67 

No,  but  because  of  greed  and  garbled  pay, 

Wages  of  sin  and  death  :  because  you  smother 

Your  conscience,  making  cursed  all  the  day. 
Bible  in  one  hand,  bludgeon  in  the  other, 
Cain-like  you  come  upon  and  slay  your  brother, 

And,  kneeling  down,  thank  God  for  it,  and  pray ! 


in 

I  whom  you  fed  with  shame  and  starved  with  woe, 

I  wheel  above  You, 
Your  fatal  vulture,  for  I  hate  You  so, 

I  almost  love  You  ! 

I  smell  your  ruin  out.     I  light  and  croak 

My  sombre  lore, 
As  swaggering  You  go  by,  O  "  heart  of  oak  " 

Rotten  to  the  core ! 

Look  westward !     Ireland's  vengeful  eyes  are  cast 

On  freedom  won. 
Look  eastward  !     India  stirs  from  sleep  at  last. 

You  are  undone ! 

Look  southward,  where  Australia  hears  your  voice, 

And  turns  away ! 
O  brutal  Hypocrite,  she  makes  her  choice 

With  the  rising  day  ! 

Foul  Esau,  you  who  sold  your  high  birthright 

For  gilded  mud, 
Who  did  the  wrong  and,  priestlike,  called  it  right, 

And  swindled  God  ! — 

The  hour  Is  gone  of 'insult ',  pain  and  patience  ; 

The  hour  Is  come 
When  they  arise,  the  faithful  mightier  Nation^ 

To  drag  you  down  ! 


68  Hong-Kong  Lyrics 


IV 

England,  the  land  I  loved 
With  passionate  pride, 

For  hate  of  whom  I  live 
Who  for  love  had  died, 

Can  I,  while  shines  the  sun, 

That  hour  regain 
When  I  again  may  come  to  you 

And  love  again  ? 

No,  not  while  that  Flag 

Of  greed  and  lust 
Flaunts  in  the  air,  untaught 

To  drag  the  dust ! — 

Never,  till  expiant, 

I  see  You  kneel, 
And,  brandished,  gleams  aloft 

The  foeman's  steel ! 

Ah,  then  to  speed,  and  laugh, 

As  my  heart  caught  the  knife 
"  Mother,  I  love  you  !     Here, 
Here  is  my  life  !  " 


Hong-Kong  Lyrics 


AT  anchor  in  that  harbour  of  the  island, 
The  Chinese  Gate, 

We  lay  where,  terraced  under  green-clad  highland, 
The  Sea-town  sate. 


Hong-Kong  Lyrics  69 

Ships,  steamers,  sailers,  many  a  flag  and  nation, 

A  motley  crew, 
Junks,  sampans,  all  East's  swarming  jubilation, 

I  watched  and  knew. 

Then,  as  I  stood,  sweet  sudden  sounds  out-swelling 

On  the  boon  breeze, 
The  church-bells'  chiming  echoes  rang  out,  telling 

Of  inland  peace. 

O  English  Chimes,  your  music  rising  and  falling 

I  cannot  praise, 
Although  to  me  it  come  sweet-sad,  recalling 

Dear  childish  days. 

Yet,  English  Chimes — last  links  of  chains  that  sever, 

Worn  out  and  done, 
That  Land  and  Creed  that  I  have  left  for  ever — 

Ring  on,  ring  on  ! 


There  is  much  in  this  sea-way  City 
I  have  not  met  with  before, 

But  one  or  two  things  I  notice 

That  I  seem  to  have  known  of  yore. 

In  the  lovely  tropical  verdure, 
In  the  streets,  behold  I  can 

The  hideous  English  Buildings 
And  the  brutal  English  Man  ! 


70  Hong-Kong  Lyrics 


I  stand  and  watch  the  Soldiers 

Marching  up  and  down, 
Above  the  fresh  green  Cricket-ground 

Just  outside  the  town. 


I  stand  and  watch  and  wonder 
When  in  the  English  land 

This  poor  fool  Tommy  Atkins 
Will  learn  and  understand  ? 


Zulus,  and  Boers,  and  Arabs, 

All  fighting  to  be  free, 
Men  and  women  and  children, 

Maimed  and  murdered  has  he. 

In  India  and  in  Ireland 

He's  held  the  People  down, 
While  the  robber  English  Gentleman 

Took  pound  and  penny  and  crown. 

To  make  him  false  to  his  Order, 
What  was  it  that  they  gave — 

To  make  him  his  brother's  oppressor  ? 
The  clothes  and  soul  of  a  slave  ! 

O  thou  poor  fool;  Tommy  Atkins, 

Thou  wilt  be  wise  that  day 
When,  with  eager  eyes  and  clenched  teeth, 

Thou  risest  up  to  say  : 

"  This  is  our  well-loved  England, 

And  V II  free  it  if  I  can, 
From  every  rotten  Shop-keeper, 

And  played-out  Gentleman  I " 


A  Glimpse  of  China          71 


IV 

"Happy  Valley'** 

This  is  the  love  of  Nature^  that  the  same  peace  awaits  us  a//") 

There  is  a  valley  green  that  lies 
'Mid  hills,  the  summer's  bower. 

The  many-coloured  butterflies 
Flutter  from  flower  to  flower. 

And  round  one  lush  green  side  of  it, 

In  gardened  homes  are  laid, 
With  grief  and  care  compassionate, 

The  People  of  the  Dead. 

There  all  the  voicing  summer  day 

They  sing,  the  happy  rills. 
No  noisy  sound  awakes  away 

The  echoes  of  the  hills. 


A  Glimpse  of  China 

i 
In  a  Sampan 

(Min  River  t  Fo  Kien) 

T  7  P  in  the  misty  morning, 
^    Up  past  the  gardened  hills, 
With  the  rhythmic  stroke  of  the  rowers, 
While  the  blue  deep  pales  and  thrills  ! 

*  This  graveyard,  one  side  of  a  gully,  which  suddenly  expands  and 
leaves  its  base  large  enough  for  the  local  race-course,  is  in  summer  one  of 
the  loveliest  spots  on  earth.  Hindoos,  Protestants,  Catholics,  and  Mahom- 
edans  have  their  separate  portions.  Here  in  regimental  or  individual 
tombs  is  to  be  found  the  record  of  noble  lives  thrown  away  in  the  iniquity 
of  the  English  relations  with  China. 


72          A  Glimpse  of  China 

Past  the  rice-fields  green  low-lying, 
Where  the  sea-gull's  winging  down 

From  the  fleets  of  junks  and  sampans 
And  the  ancient  Chinese  Town  ! 


ii 
In  a  Chair 

(Foo-choiv) 

From  the  bright  and  blinding  sunshine, 
From  the  whirling  locust's  song, 

Into  the  dark  and  narrow  fissures 
Of  the  streets  I  am  borne  along. 

Here  and  there  dusky-beaming 
A  sun-shaft  broadens  and  drops 

On  the  brown  bare  crowd  slow-passing, 
The  crowd  of  the  open  shops. 

We  move  on  over  the  bridges 

With  their  straight-hewn  blocks  of  stone, 
And  their  quaint  grey  animal  figures, 

And  the  booths  the  hucksters  own. 

Behind  a  linen  awning 

Sits  an  ancient  wight  half-dead, 
And  a  little  dear  of  a  girl  is 

Examining — his  head. 

On  a  bended  bamboo  shouldered, 

Bearing  a  block  of  stone, 
Two  worn-out  Coolies  half-naked 

Utter  their  grunting  groan. 

Children,  almond-eyed  beauties, 

Impossibly  mangy  curs, 
Take  part  in  the  motley  stream  of 

Insouciant  passengers. 


A  Glimpse  of  China          73 


This  is  the  Dream,  the  Vision 
That  comes  to  me  and  greets — 

The  Vision  of  Retribution 
In  the  labyrinthine  streets. 


in 
"Caste" 

These  Chinese  toil,  and  yet  they  do  not  starve, 
And  they  obey,  and  yet  they  are  not  slaves. 

It  is  the  "  free-born  "  fuddled  Englishmen 
Who  grovel  rotting  in  their  living  graves. 

These  Chinese  do  not  fawn  with  servile  lips  ; 

They  lift  up  equal  eyes  that  ask  and  scan. 
Their  degradation  has  escaped  at  least 

That  choicest  curse  of  all — the  Gentleman  ! 


IV 

Over  the  Samovar  * 

(Foo-choiv) 

"  Yes,  I  used  always  to  think 
That  you  Russians  knew 
How  to  make  the  good  drink 
As  none  others  do. 

"  And  I  thought  moreover, 

(Not  with  the  epicures), 
You  might  search  the  world  over 
For  such  Women  as  yours. 

"  In  both  these  matters  now 

I  perceive  I  was  right, 
And  I  really  can't  tell  you  how 
Much  I  delight 

*  The  Russian  tea-urn. 


74  To  Jap 


an 


"  In  my  third  (Thanks,  another  cup  !) 

Idea  of  the  fun, 
When  your  Country  gets  up 
And  follows  the  sun ! 

"  And  just  as  in  Europe,  see, 

There's  a  Conqueror  Nation, 
So  why  not  in  Asia  be 
A  like  jubilation  ? 

"  Taught  as  well  as  organized,* 

The  eternal  Coolie, 
From  being  robbed  and  despised, 
Takes  to  cutting  throats  duly ! 

"  But — please,  don't  be  flurried  ; 

For  I  daresay  by  then 
You'll  be  comfortably  buried, 
Ladies  and  gentlemen ! 

"  No  more,  thanks  !  I  must  be  going  ! 

I'm  so  glad  to  have  made  this 
Opportunity  of  knowing 

Some  more  Russian  ladies  !  " 


To  Japan 

OIMPLE  You  were,  and  good.     No  kindlier  heart 
^  Beat  than  the  heart  within  your  gentle  breast. 

Labour  You  had,  and  happiness,  and  rest, 
And  were  the  maid  of  nations.      Now  You  start 
To  feverish  life,  feeling  the  poisonous  smart 
Upon  your  lips  of  harlot  lips  close-pressed, 
The  lips  of  Her  who  stands  among  the  rest 
With  greasy  righteous  soul  and  rotten  heart. 

*  In  China  the  system  of  Trades  Unions  is  admirable.     Coolie  is  the 
generic  term  in  the  East  for  labourer. 


England  7  5 


H 


O  sunrise  land,  O  land  of  gentleness, 

What  madness  drives  you  to  lust's  hateful  bed  ? 
O  thrice-accursed  England,  wretchedness 

For  ever  be  on  you,  of  whom  'tis  said, 
Prostitute  plague-struck,  that  you  catch  and  kiss 

Innocent  lives  to  make  them  foully  dead! 


Dai  Butsu  * 

(Kama  Kura) 
E  sits.     Upon  the  kingly  head  doth  rest 


The  round-balled  wimple,  and  the  heavy  rings 
Touch  on  the  shoulders  where  the  shadow  clings. 

The  downward  garment  shows  the  ambiguous  breast ; 

The  Face — that  Face  one  scarce  can  look  on,  lest 
One  learn  the  secret  of  unspeakable  things  ; 
But  the  dread  gaze  descends  with  shudderings, 

To  the  veiled  couched  knees,  the  hands  and  thumbs  close  pressed. 

O  lidded,  downcast  Eyes  that  bear  the  weight 
Of  all  our  woes  and  terrible  wrong's  increase  : 
Proud  Nostrils,  Lips  proud-perfecter  than  these, 

With  what  a  soul  within  you  do  you  wait ! 

Disdain  and  pity,  love  late-born  of  hate, 
Passion  eternal,  patience,  pride  and  peace ! 


England 

TTfHERE'ER  I  go  in  this  dense  East, 

In  sunshine  or  shade, 
I  retch  at  the  villainous  feast 
That  England  has  made, 

*  This  is  one  of  the  three  well-known  Japanese  colossi  of  Gautama,  the 
Buddha.  The  same  type  of  proud  patience  marks  this  embodiment  of  the 
suffering  East,  wherever  we  meet  it. 


76          A  South-Sea  Islander 

And  my  shame  cannot  understand, 

As  scorn  springs  elate, 
How  I  ever  loved  that  land 

I  loathe  and  hate ! 


The  Fisherman 

(Mindanao,  Philippines) 

TN  the  dark  waveless  sea, 
Deep  blue  under  deep  blue, 

The  fisher  drifts  by  on  the  tide 
In  his  small  pole-balanced  canoe. 

Above  him  the  cloud-capped  hills 
Crown  the  dense  jungly  sweeps  ; 

The  cocoa-nut  groves  hedge  round 
The  hut  where  the  beach-wave  sleeps. 

Is  it  not  better  so 

To  be  as  this  Savage  is, 
Than  to  live  the  Wage-slave's  life 

Of  hopeless  agonies  ? 


A  South-Sea  Islander 

A  LOLL  in  the  warm  clear  water, 
*-^  On  her  back  with  languorous  limbs, 
She  lies.     The  baby  upon  her  breasts 
Paddles  and  falls  and  swims. 


New  Guinea  "Converts'"      77 

With  half-closed  eyes  she  smiles, 

Guarding  it  with  her  hands  ; 
And  the  sob  swells  up  in  my  heart — 

In  my  heart  that  understands. 

Deary  in  the  English  country. 

The  hatefullest  land  on  earthy 
The  mothers  are  starved  and  the  children  die, 

And  death  is  better  than  birth  I 


New  Guinea  "  Converts  " 

T  SAW  them  as  they  were  born, 
-*•    Erect  and  fearless  and  free, 
Facing  the  sun  and  the  wind 
Of  the  hills  and  the  sea. 

I  saw  them  naked,  superb, 

Like  the  Greeks  long  ago, 
With  shield  and  spear  and  arrow 

Ready  to  strike  and  throw. 

I  saw  them  as  they  were  made 

By  the  Christianizing  crows, 
Blinking,  stupid,  clumsy, 

In  their  greasy  ill-cut  clothes  : 

I  heard  their  gibbering  cant, 

And  they  sung  those  hymns  that  smell 
Of  poor  souls  besotted,  degraded 

With  the  fear  of  "  God  "  and  «  Hell." 

And  I  thought  if  Jesus  could  see  them, 
He  who  loved  the  freedom,  the  light, 

And  loathed  those  who  compassed  heaven 
And  earth  for  one  proselyte, 


7  8  A  Death  at  Sea 

To  make  him,  etcetera,  etcetera, — 
Then  this  sight,  as  on  me  or  you, 

Would  act  on  him  like  an  emetic, 
And  he'd  have  to  go  off  and  spue. 

O  Jesus,  O  man  of  the  People, 
Who  died  to  abolish  all  this — 

The  Pharisee  rank  and  respectable, 
The  Scribe  and  the  scabrous  Priest— 

O  Jesus,  O  sacred  Socialist, 
You  would  die  again  of  shame, 

If  you  were  alive  and  could  see 

What  things  are  done  in  your  Name. 


A  Death  at  Sea 

(Coral  Sea,  Australia) 


"P\EAD  in  the  sheep-pen  he  lies, 
*~*  Wrapped  in  an  old  brown  sail. 
The  smiling  blue  sea  and  the  skies 
Know  not  sorrow  nor  wail. 

Dragged  up  out  of  the  hold, 

Dead  on  his  last  way  home, 
Worn-out,  wizened,  a  Chinee  old, — 

0  he  is  safe — at  home ! 

Brother,  I  stand  not  as  these 

Staring  upon  you  here. 
One  of  earth's  patient  toilers  at  peace 

1  see.  I  revere ! 


A  Death  at  Sea  79 


In  the  warm  cloudy  night  we  go 
From  the  motionless  ship  ; 

Our  lanterns  feebly  glow  ; 
Our  oars  drop  and  drip. 

We  land  on  the  thin  pale  beach, 
The  coral  isle  's  round  us  ; 

A  glade  of  driven  sand  we  reach  ; 
Our  burial  ground's  found  us. 

There  we  dig  him  a  grave,  jesting  ; 

We  know  not  his  name. 
What  heeds  he  who  is  resting,  resting  ? 

Would  I  were  the  same  ! 

Come  away,  it  is  over  and  done ! 

Peace  and  he  shall  not  sever, 
By  moonlight  nor  light  of  the  sun, 

For  ever  and  ever  ! 


in 
Dirge 

"  Sleep  in  the  pure  driven 

(No  one  will  know) 
In  the  coral  Isle  by  the  land 

Where  the  blue  tides  come  and  go. 

"  dlive,  thou  wert  poor,  despised ; 

Dead,  thou  canst  have 
What  mightiest  monarchs  have  prized. 
An  eternal  grave  ! 

"  Alone  with  the  lovely  isles, 

With  the  lovely  deep, 

Where  the  sea-winds  sing  and  the  sunlight  smiles, 
Thou  liest  asleep  I  " 


III.    Australia 
The  Outcasts 

(Melbourne) 

t_J  ERE  to  the  parks  they  come, 

The  scourings  of  the  town, 
Like  weary  wounded  animals 

Seeking  where  to  lie  them  down. 

Brothers,  let  us  take  together 
An  easeful  period. 

There  is  worse  than  to  be  as  We  are — 
Cast  out,  not  of  Men  but  of  God ! 


In  the  Sea-Gardens 

(Sydney) 
"The  Man  of  the  Nation" 

Y^ONDER  the  band  is  playing 

And  the  fine  Young  People  walk. 
They  are  envying  each  other  and  talking 
Their  pretty  empty  talk. 

There  in  the  shade  on  the  outskirts, 
Stretched  on  the  grass  I  see 

A  Man  with  a  slouch  hat  smoking, 
That  is  the  Man  for  me ! 

80 


Labour — Capital — Land        8 1 

That  is  the  Man  of  the  Nation  ; 

He  works  and  much  endures. 
When  all  the  rest  is  rotten, 

He  rises  and  cuts  and  cures. 

He's  the  soldier  of  the  Crimea, 

Fighting  to  honour  fools  ; 
He's  the  grappler  and  strangler  of  Lee, 

Lord  of  the  terrible  tools. 

He's  in  all  the  conquered  nations 

That  have  won  their  own  at  last, 
And  in  all  that  yet  shall  win  it. 

And  the  World  by  him  goes  past ! 

O  strong  sly  World,  this  nameless 

Still,  much-enduring  Man, 
Is  the  Hand  of  God  that  shall  clutch  you 

For  all  you  have  done  or  can ! 


Labo  u  r — Capital — Land 

TN  that  rich  Archipelago  of  sea 

A   With  fiery  hills,  thick  woods  wherein  the  mias* 

Browses  along  the  trees,  and  god-like  men 

Leave  monuments  of  speech  too  large  for  us,f 

There  are  strange  forest-trees.     Far  up,  their  roots 

Spread  from  the  central  trunk,  and  settle  down 

Deep  in  the  life-fed  earth,  seventy  feet  below. 

In  the  past  days  here  grew  another  tree, 

On  whose  high  fork  the  parasitic  seed 

Fell  and  sprang  up,  and  finding  life  and  strength 

In  the  disease,  decrepitude  and  death 

Of  that  it  fed  on,  utterly  consumed  it, 

And  stands  the  monument  of  Nature's  crime ! 

*  Orang-utan. 

t  The  Buddhistic  temple  in  Java,  known  as  the  temple  of  Borobodo. 


82  Art 

So  Labour  with  his  parasites,  the  two 

Great  swollen  Robbers,  Land  and  Capital, 

Stands  to  the  gaze  of  men  but  as  a  heap 

Of  rotted  dust  whose  only  use  must  be 

To  rich  the  roots  of  the  proud  stem  that  killed  it !  * 


Australia 

F  SEE  a  Land  of  desperate  droughts  and  floods  : 
I  see  a  land  where  Need  keeps  spreading  round, 
And  all  but  giants  perish  in  the  stress  : 
I  see  a  Land  where  more,  and  more,  and  more 
The  demons,  Earth  and  Wealth,  grow  bloat  and  strong. 

I  see  a  Land  that  lies  a  helpless  prey 

To  wealthy  cliques  and  gamblers  and  their  slaves, 

The  huckster  politicians  :  a  poor  Land 

That  less  and  less  can  make  her  heart-wish  law. 

Yea,  but  I  see  a  Land  where  some  few  brave 
Raise  clear  eyes  to  the  struggle  that  must  come, 
Reaching  firm  hands  to  draw  the  doubters  in, 
Preaching  the  gospel  :  "  Drill  and  drill  and  drill !  " 
Yea,  but  I  see  a  Land  where  best  of  all 
The  hope  of  Victory  burns  strong  and  bright ! 


Art 

"  VfES,  let  Art  go,  if  it  must  be 

That  with  it  men  must  starve — 
If  Music,  Painting,  Poetry 

Spring  from  the  wasted  hearth  !  " 

*  This  explanation  of  these  curious  arboreal  growths  is  Mr.  Alfred 
Wallace's  (Malay  Archipelago,  chapter  v.),  and  in  this  matter  also  we  may 
perhaps  be  content  to  rely  on  that  "innate  genius  for  solving  difficulties" 
which  Darwin  has  assigned  to  the  illustrious  naturalist  whom  Socialism  is 
proud  to  number  among  her  sons. 


Henry  George  83 

Yes,  let  Art  go,  till  once  again 

Through  fearless  heads  and  hands 
The  toil  of  millions  and  the  pain 

Be  passed  from  out  the  lands  : 

Till  from  the  few  their  plunder  falls 

To  those  who've  toiled  and  earned 
But  misery's  hopeless  intervals 

From  those  who've  robbed  and  spurned. 

Yes,  let  Art  go,  without  a  fear, 

Like  Autumn  flowers  we  burn, 
For,  with  her  reawakening  year, 

Be  sure  she  will  return  ! — 

Return,  but  greater,  nobler  yet 

Because  her  laurel  crown 
With  dew  and  not  with  blood  is  wet, 

And  as  our  Queen  sit  down ! 


Henry  George 

(Melbourne) 

T  CAME  to  buy  a  book.     It  was  a  shop 
Down  in  a  narrow  quiet  street,  and  here 
They  kept,  I  knew,  these  socialistic  books. 
I  entered.     All  was  bare,  but  clean  and  neat. 
The  shelves  were  ranged  with  unsold  wares  ;  the  counter 
Held  a  few  sheets  and  papers.      Here  and  there 
Hung  prints  and  calendars.      I  rapped,  and  straight 
A  young  Girl  came  out  through  the  inner  door. 
She  had  a  clear  and  simple  face  ;    I  saw 
She  had  no  beauty,  loveliness,  nor  charm, 
But,  as  your  eyes  met  those  grey  light-lit  eyes 
Like  to  a  mountain  spring  so  pure,  you  thought : 
"  He'd  be  a  clever  man  who  looked,  and  lied  !  " 


84  Henry  George 


I  asked  her  for  the  book.  .  .  .  We  spoke  a  little. 

Her  words  were  as  her  face  was,  as  her  eyes. 

Yes,  she'd  read  many  books  like  this  of  mine  : 

Also  some  poets,  Shelley,  Byron  too, 

And  Tennyson,  but  "  poets  only  dreamed  !  " 

Thus,  then,  we  talked,  until  by  chance  I  spoke 

A  phrase  and  then  a  name.     'Twas  "  Henry  George." 

Her  face  lit  up.     O  it  was  beautiful, 

Or  never  woman's  face  was !     "  Henry  George  ?  " 

She  said.     And  then  a  look,  a  flush,  a  smile, 

Such  as  sprung  up  in  Magdalene's  cheek 

When  some  voice  uttered  Jesus,  made  her  angel. 

She  turned  and  pointed  up  the  counter.     I, 

Loosing  mine  eyes  from  that  ensainted  face, 

Looked  also.     'Twas  a  print,  a  common  print, 

The  head  and  shoulders  of  a  man.     She  said, 

Quite  in  a  whisper  :  "  That's  Aim,  Henry  George  I " 

Darling,  that  in  this  life  of  wrong  and  woe, 

The  lovely  woman-soul  within  you  brooded 

And  wept  and  loved  and  hated  and  pitied, 

And  knew  not  what  its  helplessness  could  do, 

Its  helplessness,  its  sheer  bewilderment — 

That  then  those  eyes  should  fall,  those  angel  eyes, 

On  one  who'd  brooded,  wept,  loved,  hated,  pitied, 

Even  as  you  had,  but  therefrom  had  sprung 

A  hope,  a  plan,  a  scheme  to  right  this  wrong, 

And  make  this  woe  less  hateful  to  the  sun — 

And  that  pure  soul  had  found  its  Master  thus 

To  listen  to,  remember,  watch  and  love, 

And  trust  the  dawn  that  rose  up  through  the  dark  : 

O  this  was  good 

For  me  to  see,  as  for  some  weary  hopeless 

Longer  and  toiler  for  "  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven" 

To  stand  some  lifeless  twilight  hour,  and  hear, 

There  in  a  dim-lit  house  of  Lazarus, 

Mary  who  said  :  "  Thus,  thus  he  looked,  he  spake, 

The  Master  !  " — So  to  hear  her  rapturous  words, 

And  gaze  upon  her  up-raised  heavenly  face  ! 


The  Australian   Flag          85 


William  Wallace 
(For  the  Ballarat  statue  of  him) 

is  Scotch  William  Wallace.     It  was  He 
Who  in  dark  hours  first  raised  his  face  to  see  : 
Who  watched  the  English  tyrant  Nobles  spurn, 
Steel-clad,  with  iron  hoofs  the  Scottish  Free  : 

Who  armed  and  drilled  the  simple  footman  Kern, 
Yea,  bade  in  blood  and  rout  the  proud  Knight  learn 

His  Feudalism  was  dead,  and  Scotland  stand 
Dauntless  to  wait  the  day  of  Bannockburn ! 

O  Wallace,  peerless  lover  of  thy  land, 

We  need  thee  still,  thy  moulding  brain  and  hand ! 

For  us,  thy  poor,  again  proud  tyrants  spurn, 
The  robber  Rich,  a  yet  more  hateful  band ! 


The  Australian  Flag 

pURE  blue  Flag  of  heaven 

With  your  silver  stars, 
Not  beside  those  Crosses' 
Blood-stained  torture-bars  : 

Not  beside  the  token 
The  foul  sea-harlot  gave, 

Pure  blue  Flag  of  heaven, 
Must  you  ever  wave  ! 

No,  but  young  exultant, 
Free  from  care  and  crime, 

The  soulless  selfish  England 
Of  this  later  time  : 


86  To  His  Love 

No,  but,  faithful,  noble 
Rising  from  her  grave, 

Flag  of  light  and  liberty, 
For  ever  must  you  wave ! 


To  an  old  Friend  in  England 

\\7 AS  it  for  nothing  in  the  years  gone  by, 

O  my  love,  O  my  friend, 

You  thrilled  me  with  your  noble  words  of  faith  ? — 
Hope  beyond  life,  and  love,  love  beyond  death ! 
Yet  now  I  shudder,  and  yet  you  did  not  die, 
O  my  friend,  O  my  love ! 

Was  it  for  nothing  in  the  dear  dead  years, 

O  my  love,  O  my  friend, 

I  kissed  you  when  you  wrung  my  heart  from  me, 
And  gave  my  stubborn  hand  where  trust  might  be  ? 
Yet  then  I  smiled,  and  see,  these  bitter  tears, 

O  my  friend,  O  my  love  ! 

No  bitter  words  to  say  to  you  have  I, 

O  my  love,  O  my  friend ! 

That  faith,  that  hope,  that  love  was  mine,  not  yours ! 
And  yet  that  kiss,  that  clasp  endures,  endures. 
I  have  no  bitter  words  to  say.     Good-bye, 

O  my  friend,  O  my  love ! 


To  his  Love 

"  '"PEACH  me,  love,  to  be  true ; 

A     Teach  me,  love,  to  love  ; 
Teach  me  to  be  pure  like  you. 
It  will  be  more  than  enough  ! 


Her  Poem  87 

"  Ah,  and  in  days  to  come, 

Give  me,  my  seraph,  too, 
A  son  nobler  than  I, 

A  daughter  true  like  you  : 

"  A  son  to  battle  the  wrong, 

To  seek  and  strive  for  the  right ; 
A  beautiful  daughter  of  song, 
To  point  us  on  to  the  light !  " 


Her  Poem 

"  My  baby  girl,  that  was  born  and  died 
on  the  same  day  " 


wild  torn  heart  I  see  them  still, 
Wee  unused  clothes  and  empty  cot. 
Though  glad  my  love  has  missed  the  ill 
That  falls  to  woman's  lot. 

"  No  tangled  paths  for  her  to  tread 

Throughout  the  coming  changeful  years  ; 
No  desperate  weird  to  dree  and  dread  ; 
No  bitter  lonely  tears  ! 

"  No  woman's  piercing  crown  of  thorns 
Will  press  my  aching  baby's  brow  ; 
No  starless  nights,  no  sunless  morns, 
Will  ever  greet  her  now. 

"  The  clothes  that  I  had  wrought  with  care 

Through  weary  hours  for  love's  sweet  sake 
Are  laid  aside,  and  with  them  there 
/±  heart  that  seemed  to  break," 


88     Algernon  Charles  Swinburne 


To  Karl  Marx 

T  for  the  thought  that  burns  on  keen  and  clear, 
Heat  that  the  heat  has  turned  from  red  to  white, 
The  passion  of  the  lone  remembering  night 

One  with  the  patience  day  must  see  and  hear — 

Not  for  the  shafts  the  lying  foemen  fear, 

Shot  from  the  soul's  intense  self-centring  light — 
But  for  the  heart  of  love  divine  and  bright, 

We  praise  you,  worker,  thinker,  poet,  seer  ! 

Man  of  the  People — faithful  in  all  parts, 

The  veins'  last  drop,  the  brain's  last  flickering  dole, 
You  on  whose  forehead  beams  the  aureole 

That  hope  and  "  certain  hope  "  alone  imparts — 
Us  have  you  given  your  perfect  heart  and  soul ; 

Wherefore  receive  as  yours  our  souls  and  hearts. 


Algernon  Charles  Swinburne 

CHRIEKS  out  of  smoke,  a  flame  of  dung-straw  fire 
^  That  is  not  quenched  but  hath  for  only  fruit 

What  writhes  and  dies  not  in  its  rotten  root : 
Two  things  made  flesh,  the  visible  desire 
To  match  in  filth  the  skunk,  the  ape  in  ire,* 

Mouthing  before  the  mirrors  with  wild  foot 

Beyond  all  feebler  footprint  of  pursuit, 
The  perfect  twanger  of  the  Chinese  lyre ! 
A  heart  with  generous  virtues  run  to  seed 
In  vices  making  all  a  jumbled  creed  : 

A  soul  that  knows  not  love  nor  trust  nor  shame, 
But  cuts  itself  with  knives  to  bawl  and  bleed — 

If  thou  we've  known  of  late,  art  still  the  same, 

What  need,  O  soul,  to  sign  thee  with  thy  name  ? 

*  His  attack  on  Carlyle,  for  instance,  of  which  the  prose  part  is  the 
fouler,  the  verse  part  the  more  virulent. 


To  Sydney  Jephcott  89 

Once  on  thy  lips  the  golden-honeyed  bees 

Settling  made  sweet  the  heart  that  was  not  strong, 
And  sky  and  earth  and  sea  swooned  into  song  :* 

Once  on  thine  eyes  the  light  of  agonies 

Flashed  through  the  soul  and  robbed  the  days  of  ease,  f 
But  tunes  turn  stale  when  love  turns  babe,  and  long 
The  exiled  gentlemen  grow  fat  with  wrong, 

And  peasants,  workmen,  beggars,  what  are  these  ?  { 

O  you  who  sang  the  Italian  smoke  above — 
Mud-lark  of  Freedom,  pipe  of  that  vile  band 

Whose  envy  slays  the  tyrant,  not  the  love 

Of  these  poor  souls  none  have  the  keeping  of — 
It  is  your  hand — it  is  your  pander  hand 
Smites  the  bruised  mouth  of  pilloried  Ireland  ! 


To  Sydney  Jephcott 

(The  friend  my  verse  won  for  me) 
With  a  Copy  of  My  "Poetical  Works" 

"  HP  AKE  with  all  my  heart,  friend,  this, 

-*•     The  labour  of  my  past, 
Though  the  heart  here  hidden  is 
And  the  soul's  eternities 
Hold  the  present  fast. 

"  Take  it,  still,  with  soul  and  heart, 

Pledge  of  that  dear  day 
When  the  shadows  stir  and  start, 
By  the  bright  Sun  burst  apart — 
Toung  Australia  !  " 

*  Poems  and  'Ballads  (ist  series).  f  Songs  before  Sunrise. 

£  The  picturesque  Italian  gentlemen  who  struggled  (some  of  them)  so 
heroically  for  Italian  Nationalism  represent  to-day  a  tyranny  deeper  and 
more  dark  than  that  of  the  Austrian  foreigners,  the  tyranny  of  caste.  The 
certainty  of  popularity  was  the  bait  held  out  by  the  rancorous  respectability 
of  the  London  Times,  and  poetical  vanity  swallowed  it,  making  Mr.  Swin- 
burne also  among  the  panders  in  his  denunciation  of  Irish  Nationalism. 


go  "  Father  Abe 


o 


"Father  Abe" 

(Song  of  the  American  Sons  of  Labour) 

The  Song 

WE  knew  so  well,  dear  Father, 
When  we  answered  to  your  call, 
And  the  Southern  Moloch  stricken 
Shook  and  tottered  to  his  fall — 

O  we  knew  so  well  you  loved  us, 
And  our  hearts  beat  back  to  yours 

With  the  rapturous  adoration 

That  through  all  the  years  endures  ! 

Mothers,  sisters  bade  us  hasten 

Sweethearts,  wives  with  babe  at  breast ; 
For  the  Union,  faith  and  freedom, 

For  our  hero  of  the  West ! 

And  we  wrung  forth  victory  blood-stained 
From  the  desperate  hands  of  Crime, 

And  our  Cause  blazed  out  Man's  beacon 
Through  the  endless  future  time ! 

And  forgiven,  forever  we  bade  it 
Cease,  that  envy,  hatred,  strife, 

As  he  willed,  our  murdered  Father 
That  had  sealed  his  love  with  life ! 

O  dear  Father,  was  it  thus,  then  ? 

Did  we  this  but  in  a  dream  ? 
Is  it  real,  this  hideous  present  ? 

Does  our  suffering  only  seem  ? 

Bend  and  listen,  look  and  tell  us ! 

Are  these  joyless  toilers  We  ? 
Slaves  more  wretched,  patient,  piteous 

Than  the  slaves  we  fought  to  free  ! 


"Father  Abe"  91 

Are  these  weak,  worn  girls  and  women 

Those  whose  mothers  yet  can  tell 
How  they  kissed  and  clasped  men  god-like 

With  fierce  faces  fronting  hell  ? 

Bend  and  listen,  look  and  tell  us ! 

Is  this  silent  waste,  possessed 
By  bloat  thieves  and  their  task-masters, 

Thy  free,  thy  fair,  thy  fearless  West  ? 

Are  these  Eastern  mobs  of  wage-slaves, 

Are  these  cringing  debauchees, 
Sons  of  those  who  slung  their  rifles — 

Shook  the  old  Flag  to  the  breeze  ? 


The  Answer 

Men  and  boys,  O  fathers,  brothers, 
Burst  these  fetters  round  you  bound. 

Women,  sisters,  wives  and  mothers, 
Lift  your  faces  from  the  ground ! 

O  Democracy,  O  People, 

East  and  West  and  North  and  South, 
Rise  together,  one  for  ever, 

Strike  this  Crime  upon  the  mouth ! 

Bid  them  not,  the  men  who  loved  you, 
Those  who  fought  for  you  and  died, 

Scorn  you  that  you  broke  a  small  Crime, 
Left  a  great  Crime  pass  in  pride ! 

England,  France,  the  played-out  countries, 
Let  them  reek  there  in  their  stew, 

Let  their  past  rot  out  their  present, 
But  the  Future  is  with  you ! 

O  America,  O  first-born 

Of  the  age  that  yet  shall  be 
Where  all  men  shall  be  as  one  man, 

Noble,  faithful,  fearless,  free ! — 


92  "A  Fool 


O  America,  O  paramour 

Of  the  foul  slave-owner  Pelf, 

You  who  saved  from  slavery  others, 
Now  from  slavery  save  yourself! — 

Save  yourself,  though,  anguish-shaken, 
You  cry  out  and  bow  your  head, 

Crying  "  Why  am  I  forsaken  ?  " 
Crying  "  It  is  finished  !  " 

Save  yourself,  no  God  will  save  you  ; 

Not  one  angel  can  he  give ! 
They  and  He  are  dead  and  vanished, 

And  'tis  you,  'tis  you  must  live ! 

Risen  again,  fire-tried,  victorious, 

From  the  grave  of  Crime  down-hurled, 

Peerless,  pure,  serene  and  glorious, 
Wield  the  sceptre  of  the  world ! 


"  A  Fool " 

(Brisbane) 

LJ  E  asked  me  of  my  friend — "  a  clever  man  ; 
*•       Such  various  talent,  business,  journalism  ; 
A  pen  that  might  some  day  have  sent  out  *  leaders ' 
From  our  greatest  newspapers. " — "  Yes,  all  this, 
All  this,"  I  said, — "  And  yet  he  -will  not  rise  ? 
He'll  stay  a  *  comp.,'  a  printer  all  his  life  ?  " — 
I  said  :  "  Just  that,  a  workman  all  his  life." 
But,  as  my  questioner  was  a  business  man, 
One  of  the  sons  of  Capital,  a  sage 
Whose  Practicality  saw  (I  can  suppose) 
Quite  to  his  nose- tip  or  even  his  finger-ends, 
I  vouchsafed  explanation.      "  This  young  man, 
My  friend,  was  born  and  bred  a  workman.     All 
His  heart  and  soul  (and  men  have  souls  and  hearts 


"A  Fool"  93 


Other  than  those  the  doctor  proses  of, 

The  parson  prates  of,  and  both  make  their  trade) 

Were  centred  in  his  comradeship  and  love. 

His  friends,  his  *  mates '  were  workmen,  and  the  girl 

He  wooed,  and  made  a  happy  wife  and  mother, 

Had  heart  and  soul  like  him  in  whence  she  sprung. 

Observe  now  !     When  he  came  to  think  and  read, 

He  saw  (it  seemed  to  him  he  saw)  in  what 

Capitalists,  Employers,  men  like  you, 

Think  and  call  *  justice  '  in  your  inter-dealings, 

Some  slight  mistakes  (I  fancy  hed  say  *  wrongs  ') 

Whereby  his  order  suffered.     So  he  wonders  : 

*  Cannot  we  change  this  ?  '     And  he  tries  and  tries, 

Knowing  his  fellows  and  adapting  all 

His  effort  in  the  channels  that  they  know. 

You  understand  ?     He's  *  only  an  Unionist ! ' 

Now  for  the  second  point.     This  man  believes 

That  these  mistakes — these  wrongs  (we'll  pass  the  word) 

Spring  from  a  certain  thing  called  *  competition ' 

Which  you  (and  I)  know  is  a  God-given  thing 

Whereby  the  fittest  get  up  to  the  top 

(That's  I — or  you)  and  tread  down  all  the  others. 

Well,  this  man  sees  how  by  this  God-given  thing 

He  has  the  chance  to  use  his  extra  wits 

And  clamber  up  :  he  sees  how  others  have — 

(Like  you — or  me  ;  my  father's  father's  father 

Was  a  market-gardener  and,  I  trust,  a  good  one). 

He  sees,  moreover,  how  perpetually 

Each  of  his  fellows  who  has  extra  wits 

Has  used  them  as  the  fox  fallen  in  the  well 

Used  the  confiding  goat,  and  how  the  goats 

More  and  more  wallow  there  and  stupefy, 

Robbed  of  the  little  wit  the  hapless  crowd 

Had  in  their  general  haplessness.     Well,  then 

This  man  of  mine  (this  is  against  all  law, 

Human,  divine  and  natural,  I  admit) 

Prefers  to  wallow  there  and  not  get  out, 

Except  they  all  can  !     I've  made  quite  a  tale 

About  what  is  quite  simple.     Yet  'tis  curious, 


94  "A  Fool' 

As  I  see  you  hold.     Now  frankly  tell  me,  will  you, 

What  do  you  think  of  him  ?  "— "  He  Is  a  fool !  " 

"  He  is  a  fool  ?     There  is  no  doubt  of  it ! 

But  I  am  told  that  it  was  some  such  fool 

Came  once  from  Galilee,  and  ended  on 

A  criminal's  cross  outside  Jerusalem, — 

And  that  this  fool,  he  and  his  criminal's  cross, 

Broke  up  an  Empire  that  seemed  adamant, 

And  made  a  new  world,  which,  renewed  again, 

Is  Europe  still. 

He  is  a  fool !     And  it  was  some  such  fool 

Drudged  up  and  down  the  earth  these  later  years, 

And  wrote  a  Book  the  other  fools  bought  up 

In  tens  of  thousands,  calling  it  a  Gospel. 

And  this  fool  too,  and  the  fools  that  follow  him, 

Or  hold  with  him,  why,  he  and  they  shall  all 

End  in  the  mad-house,  or  the  gutter,  where 

They'll  chew  the  husk  of  their  mad  dreams  and  die !  " 

"  Welly  what  are  their  follies  but  dreams  ?      They   have   done 

nothing. 

And  never  will !"  .  .   . 
"  One  moment !     I  have  just  a  word  to  say. 
How  comes  it,  tell  me,  friend,  six  weeks  ago 
A  *  comp.'  was  sent  a-packing  for  a  cause 
His  fellows  thought  unjust,  and  that  same  night 
(Or,  rather,  the  next  morning)  in  comes  one 
To  tell  you  (quite  politely)  that  unless 
That  *  comp.'  was  setting  at  his  frame  they  feared 
One  of  our  greatest  newspapers  would  not  go 
That  day  a  harbinger  of  light  and  leading 
To  gladden  and  instruct  its  thousands  ?     And, 
If  I  remember  right,  it  did — and  so  did  he, 
That  wretched  '  comp.'  set  at  his  frame,  and  does  ! 
How  came  it  also  that  three  months  ago 
Your  brother,  the  shipowner,  *  sacked '  a  man 
Out  of  his  ship,  and  bade  him  go  to  hell  ? 
And  in  the  evening  up  came  two  or  three, 
Discreetly  asking  him  to  state  the  cause  ? 
And  when  he  said  he'd  see  them  with  the  other, 


The  Mass  of  Christ  95 

(Videlicet,  in  hell),  they  said  they  feared, 

Unless  the  other  came  thence  (if  he  was  there), 

And  was  upon  his  ship  to-morrow  morning, 

It  would  not  sail.     It  did  not  sail  till  noon, 

And  he  sailed  with  it ! 

But  this  is  all  beside  the  point !     Our  *  comp.,' 

Who  sweats  there,  and  who  will  not  write  you  '  leaders ' 

Except  to  help  a  friend  who's  fallen  ill, 

Why,  he,  beyond  a  doubt  he  is — a  fool !  " 


The  Mass  of  Christ 


T^\OWN  in  the  woodlands,  where  the  streamlet  runs, 
•*^      Close  to  the  breezy  river,  by  the  dells 
Of  ferns  and  flowers  that  shun  the  summer  suns 
But  gather  round  the  lizard-haunted  wells, 
And  listen  to  the  birds'  sweet  syllables — 

Down  in  the  woodlands,  lying  in  the  shade, 

Among  the  rushes  green  that  shook  and  gleamed, 

I,  I  whose  songs  were  of  my  heart's  blood  made, 
Found  weary  rest  from  wretchedness,  it  seemed, 
And  fell  asleep,  and  as  I  slept,  I  dreamed. 


I  dreamed  I  stood  beside  a  pillar  vast 
Close  to  a  little  open  door  behind, 

Whence  the  small  light  there  was  stole  in  aghast, 
And  for  a  space  this  troubled  all  my  mind, 
To  lose  the  sunlight  and  the  sky  and  the  wind. 

For  I  could  know,  I  felt,  how  all  before, 

Though  high  and  wonderful  and  to  be  praised, 

In  heart  and  soul  and  mind  oppressed  me  sore. 
Nevertheless,  I  turned,  and  my  face  raised, 
And  on  that  pageant  and  its  glory  gazed. 


96          The  Mass  of  Christ 

The  pillars,  vast  as  this  whereby  I  stood, 

Hedged  all  the  place  about  and  towered  up  high, 

Up,  and  were  lost  within  a  billowy  cloud 

Of  slow  blue-wreathing  smoke  that  fragrantly 
Rose  from  below.     And  a  great  chaunt  and  cry 

Of  multitudinous  voices,  with  sweet  notes, 
Mingled  of  music  solemn,  glad,  serene, 

Swayed  all  the  air  and  gave  its  echoes  throats. 
And  priests  and  singers  various,  with  proud  mien, 
Filled  all  the  choir — a  strange  and  wondrous  scene. 

And  men  and  women  and  children,  in  all  hues 
Of  colour  and  fresh  raiment,  filled  the  nave ; 

And  yet  it  seemed,  this  vast  place  did  refuse 
Room  for  the  mighty  army  that  did  crave, 
And  only  to  the  vanguard  harbourage  gave. 

And,  as  I  gazed  and  watched  them  while  they  knelt 
(Their  prayers  I  watched  with  the  incense  disappear), 

And  could  not  know  my  thoughts  of  it,  I  felt 
A  touch  upon  mine  arm,  and  in  mine  ear 
Some  words,  and  turned  my  face  to  see  and  hear. 

There  was  a  man  beside  me.     In  that  light, 
Tho'  dim,  remote,  and  shadowy,  I  could  see 

His  face  swarthy  yet  pale,  and  eyes  like  night, 
With  a  strange,  far  sadness,  looking  at  me. 
It  seemed  as  if  the  buffets  of  some  sea 

Had  beaten  on  him  as  he  faced  it  long. 
The  salty  foam,  the  spittle  of  its  wrath 

Had  blurred  the  bruises  of  its  fingers  strong, 
Striking  him  pitilessly  from  out  its  path, 
Yet  had  he  braved  it  as  the  willow  hath. 

He  turned  his  look  from  me  and  where  we  stood, 
His  far  strange  look  of  sadness,  and  it  seemed 

This  temple  vast,  this  prayerful  multitude, 

These  priests  and  singers  celebrant  who  streamed 
In  gorgeous  ranks  towards  the  fane  that  gleamed, 


The  Mass  of  Christ 

Were  to  him  as  some  vision  is,  untrue, 

Tho'  true  we  take  it,  undeceived  the  while, 

But,  since  it  was  unknown  to  him  all  through, 
And  hid  some  meaning  (it  might  be  of  guile), 
He  turned  once  more,  and  spake  in  gentle  style. 

"  Nay,  this,"  he  said,  "  is  not  the  Temple,  nor 
The  children  of  Israel  these,  whom  less  sufficed 

Of  chaunt  and  ritual.     They  whom  we  abhor, 
The  Phoenicians,  to  their  gods  have  sacrificed !  " 
I  said,  "  Nay,  sir,  this  is  the  Mass  of  Christ." 

"The  Mass  of  Christ  ?  "  he  murmured.     And  I  said 
"  This  is  the  day  on  which  He  came  below, 

And  this  is  Rome,  and  far  up  overhead 

Soars  the  great  dome  that  bids  the  wide  world  know 
St.  Peter  still  rules  o'er  his  Church  below ! " 

"  The  Christ  ?  "  he  said,  "  and  Peter,  who  are  they  ?  " 
I  answered,  "  Jesus  was  he  in  the  days  long  past, 

And  Peter  was  his  chief  disciple."     "  Nay," 
He  answered,  "  for  of  these  the  lot  was  cast 
On  poverty."     I  said,  "  That  is  all  past !  " 

Then  as  I  might,  as  for  some  stranger  great 
(Who  saw  all  things  under  an  unknown  sun), 

I  told  him  of  these  things  both  soon  and  late, 

Then,  when  I  paused  and  turned,  lo  !  he  was  gone, 
Had  left  me,  and  I  saw  him  passing  on. 

On,  up  the  aisle,  he  passed,  his  long  black  hair 
Upon  his  brown  and  common  coat ;  his  head 

Raised,  and  his  mien  such  aspect  fixed  did  wear 
As  one  may  have  whose  spirit  long  is  sped 
(Though  he  still  lives)  among  the  mighty  dead. 

He  paused  not,  neither  swerved  not,  till  he  came 
Unto  the  fane  and  steps.     Nor  there  he  learned 

Awe,  but  went  on,  till  rose  a  shrill  acclaim, 

And  the  High  Priest  from  the  great  altar  turned, 
And  raised  the  golden  sign  that  blazed  and  burned, 


97 


9  8          The  Mass  of  Christ 

And  a  slow  horror  grew  upon  us  all — • 

On  priests  and  people,  and  on  us  who  gazed — 

As  that  Great  King,  alive  beneath  the  pall, 

Heard  his  own  death-service  that  moaned  and  praised  :  * 
So  all  we  were  fearful,  expectant,  dazed. 

Then  unknown  murmurs  round  the  High  Priest  rose 
Of  men  in  doubt ;  and  all  the  multitude 

Swayed,  as  one  seized  in  a  keen  travail's  throes, 
Where,  on  the  last  steps  of  the  altar  stood, 
The  Man — the  altar  steps  all  red  like  blood. 

The  singing  ceased ;  the  air  grew  clear  and  dead, 
Save  for  the  organ  tones  that  sobbed  and  sighed. 

In  a  hushed  voice  the  High  Priest  gazing,  said, 

"  Who  are  you  ?  "  and  the  Man  straightway  replied, 
"  I,  I  am  Jesus  whom  they  crucified !  " 

His  voice  was  low  yet  every  ear  there  heard, 
And  every  eye  was  fixed  upon  him  fast  ; 

And,  when  he  spake,  the  people  all  shuddered, 
As  a  great  corn-field  at  the  south  wind's  blast, 
And  the  Man  paused,  but  spake  again  at  last : 

"  I  am  the  Galilean.     I  was  born 

Of  Joseph  and  of  Mary  in  Nazareth. 

But  God,  our  Father,  left  me  not  forlorn, 
But  breathed  in  my  soul  his  sacred  breath, 
That  I  should  be  his  prophet,  and  fear  not  death. 

"  I  taught  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven ;  the  poor,  the  oppressed 
I  loved.     The  rich,  the  priests,  did  hear  my  cry 

Of  hate  and  retribution  that  lashed  their  rest. 

Wherefore  they  caught  and  took  and  scourged  me.     I 
Was  crucified  with  the  thieves  on  Calvary  !  " 

*  The  Emperor    Charles  V.,   mightiest  of   mediaeval   kings,  had    the 
weird  fancy  to  assist  at  a  representation  of  his  own  death  service. 


The  Mass  of  Christ  99 

At  that  it  seemed  the  very  stones  did  quake, 
And  a  great  rumour  grew  and  filled  the  place ; 

The  pillars,  the  roof,  the  dome  above  did  shake, 
And  a  fierce  cry  and  arms  surged  up  apace, 
Like  to  a  storm-cloud  round  that  dark  pale  face. 

And  yet  once  more  he  spake,  and  we  did  hear  : 

"  Who  are  you  ?     What  is  this  you  do  ?  "  he  said. 

"  I  was  the  Christ.      Who  is  this  here 

You  worship  ?  "     From  that  silence  of  the  dead, 
"  Tear  him  in  pieces,"  cried  a  voice  and  fled. 

Howls,  yells,  and  execrations,  blazing  eyes, 
And  threatening  arms — it  was  unloosened  hell ! 

And  in  the  midst,  seized,  dragged  along  with  cries 
Of  hate  exultant,  still  I  saw  him  well, 
His  strange  sad  face ;  then  sickened,  swooned,  and  fell ! 


in 

Slowly  from  out  that  trance  did  I  arouse  ; 

Slowly,  with  pain,  and  all  was  weary  and  still, 

Even  as  a  dreamer  dreams  some  sweet  carouse, 
And  faints  at  touch  of  breath  and  lips  that  thrill, 
And  yet  awakes  and  yet  is  dreaming  still. 

So  I.     And  when  my  tired  eyes  look,  mine  ears, 
Echoing  those  late  noises,  listen,  and 

I  seek  to  know  what  'fore  me  now  appears, 
For  long  I  cannot  know  nor  understand, 
But  lie  as  some  wrecked  sailor  on  the  strand. 

Then  bit  by  bit  I  knew  it — how  I  lay 

On  the  hard  stones,  crouched  by  a  pillar  tall : 

The  wind  blew  bleak  and  raw ;  the  skies  were  grey ; 
Up  broad  stone  steps  folk  passed  into  the  wall, 
Both  men  and  women  :  there  was  no  sun  at  all. 


ioo        The  Mass  of  Christ 

I  moved,  I  rose,  I  came  close  to,  and  saw ; 
And  then  I  knew  the  place  wherein  I  was  ; 

Here  in  the  city  high,  the  ravening  maw 
Of  all  men's  toil  and  kindly  Nature's  laws, 
I  stood,  and  felt  the  dreary  winter's  flaws. 

And  by  me  rose  that  lampless  edifice 
Of  England's  soul  shrunk  to  a  skeleton, 

Whose  dingy  cross  the  grimy  air  doth  pierce — 
London,  that  hell  of  wastefulness  and  stone, 
The  piled  bones  of  the  sufferers  dead  and  gone ! 

And,  when  I  knew  all  this,  and  thought  of  it, 
And  thought  of  all  the  hateful  hours  and  dread 

That  smirched  my  youth  here,  struck,  and  stabbed,  and  lit 
The  plundered  shrine  of  trust  and  love  that  fled, 
And  left  my  soul  stripped,  bleeding  worse  than  dead, 

Wrath  grew  in  me.     For  all  around  I  knew 
The  accursed  city  worked  on  all  the  same, 

For  all  the  toiling  sufferers.     The  idle  few, 

The  vermin  foul  that  from  this  dung-heap  came, 
Made  of  our  agony  their  feast  and  game. 

And  when,  with  hands  clenched  tight,  with  eyes  of  fire, 
Sombre  and  desperate,  I  moved  on  apace, 

Within  my  soul  brooded  a  dark  desire ; 

I  reached  the  stream  of  those  who  sought  this  place, 
And  turned  with  them  and  saw  a  sudden  face. 

I  knew  it,  as  it  was  there,  meeting  mine — 
I  knew  it  with  its  strange  sad  gaze,  the  eyes 

Night-like.     Yet  on  it  now  no  more  did  shine, 
As  'twere  that  inner  light  of  victories, 
Won  from  the  fiend  that  lives  by  the  god  that  dies. 

But  very  weary,  as  my  waking  was, 

But  stunned,  it  seemed,  and  as  if  cowed  at  last, 

Were  look  and  bearing  of  him  :  I  felt  the  cause 

Even  as  I  looked.     My  wrath  and  thought  were  passed 
I  came  and  took  his  arm  and  held  it  fast. 


The  Mass  o-P  Christ         101 

And,  as  some  fever-struck  delirious  man, 
In  some  still  pausing  of  his  anguish-throes, 

Forgetful  of  it  all,  how  it  began, 

Rises  from  off  his  bed  and  dons  his  clothes, 

And  seeks  (his  footsteps  seek)  some  place  he  knows ; 

And  there  he  wanders  voiceless,  like  a  ghost, 

His  weariness  confusing  him,  until 
Worn-out,  he  helplessly  perceives  he's  lost  : 

So  was  he  here,  this  man,  stricken  and  still — 

Day,  place,  folk,  all  incomprehensible ! 

My  hold  aroused  him.     We  looked  face  in  face, 
And  in  a  little  I  could  watch  the  wonder, 

"  Where  he  had  seen  me,"  in  his  great  eyes,  chase 
The  torpor  and  oblivion  asunder. 
Close  by  there  was  a  porch,  I  drew  him  under. 

There,  after  pause,  I  asked,  "  What  do  you  here  ? " 
He  said  :  "  I  came,  I  think,  to  seek  and  see 

Something  which  I  much  long  for  and  yet  fear. 
I  have  passed  over  many  a  land  and  sea 
I  never  knew  :  my  Father  guided  me. 

"  I  think,"  he  said,  "  that  I  am  come  to  find 
Here,  in  this  cold  dark  place,  what  in  that  blue 

And  sunny  south  but  wounded  all  my  mind. 
But  I  am  weary  and  cannot  see  things  true, 
There  is  a  cloud  around  me.     And  with  you  ?  " 

"  Come,  then,"  I  said,  "  come  then,  if  you  must  know 
What  that  great  saint  hath  done  for  us,  who  is 

The  second  builder  of  your  Church  below. 
Paul,  that  was  Saul,  the  Prince  of  Charities ! 
He  saw  you  once.      Now  see  him  once — in  this  ! ' 

We  went  out  side  by  side  into  the  stream 

Of  folk  that  passed  on  upwards  thro'  the  wall 

(There  was  a  gateway  there),  and  in  the  beam 
Of  the  dull  light  we  stood  and  pillars  tall, 
And  I  said  "  Look,"  and  he  looked  at  it  all. 


1 62         The  Mass  of  Christ 

Somewhat  it  was  as  he  had  seen  before, 

Yet  darker,  gloomier,  though  some  hues  were  gay. 

For  all  these  people  had,  it  seemed,  full  store 
Of  quiet  ease,  and  loved  the  leisured  day ; 
They  sang  of  joy,  but  little  joy  had  they. 

It  was  the  function  of  the  rich,  of  those 

To  whom  contentment  springs  from  booty's  fill, 

Gorged  to  a  dull,  religious,  rank  repose. 

He  raised  his  voice.     He  spake  the  words,  "  I  will !  " 
There  came  a  sound  from  some  about,  "  Be  still ! " 

Heedless,  as  one  begrimed  with  blood  and  smoke, 
The  leader  of  a  charge  shattered  in  rout, 

Strips  off  his  tatters  and  bids  the  ranks  re-yoke, 
And  leads  them  back  to  carry  the  redoubt, 
So  was  he,  strong  once  more,  and  resolute. 

But,  as  he  moved  into  the  aisle,  there  rose 
Men  round  him,  grim  and  quiet,  and  a  hand 

Firmly  upon  each  arm  and  wrist  did  close, 
And  held  him  like  an  engine  at  command. 
He  cried  :  "  Loose  me  !     You  do  not  understand  !  " 

"  Loose  me,"  he  cried,  "  I,  Jesus,  come  to  tell " 

No  answer  made  they,  but  without  a  word 

Moved  him  away.     Their  office  they  knew  well 
With  the  impious  outcasts  who  the  good  disturb 
In  their  worship  of  their  Queen  and  of  their  Lord. 

'Twas  finished  ere  we  heard  him.     At  the  door 
They  thrust  him  out,  and  I,  who  followed  him, 

Knowing  that  he  could  enter  it  no  more, 
Led  him  away,  his  faltering  steps,  his  slim 
Frail  form  within  mine  arm  ;  his  eyes  were  dim. 

Out  and  away  from  this  I  gently  guided 

Through  wretched  streets  I  knew.     (Is  not  my  blood 

Upon  their  stones  ?).     A  few  poor  sots  derided, 
But  we  passed  on  unheeding,  as  we  could, 
Till  by  a  little  door  we  paused  and  stood. 


The  Mass  of  Christ         103 

We  entered.     'Twas  a  chamber  bare  and  small, 
With  chairs  and  benches  and  a  table.     There 

Some  six  or  seven  men  sat :  I  knew  them  all. 

I  said,  "  Food,  food  and  drink  !  "     Some  did  repair 
At  once,  without  a  word,  to  bring  their  fare. 

He  sat  down  by  the  table  listless.      But 

When  bread  was  brought  him,  water,  and  red  wine. 

Slowly  his  white  waste  hand  he  stretched,  and  put 
On  to  the  bread  and  brake  it ;  a  divine 
Smile  touched  his  lips,  and  on  his  brow  did  shine. 

They  gathered  round  him  with  strange  quiet  glances, 
These  soldiers  of  the  army  Night  hath  tried, 

One  spake  the  question  of  their  countenances — 

"  Who  are  you  ?  "     Then  he  whisperingly  replied, 
"  I,  I  am  Jesus,  whom  they  crucified  !  " 

At  that  a  murmur  rang  among  them  all. 

There  was  one  man  so  white  he  seemed  as  dead, 

Save  for  his  eyes,  and  when  he  heard  them  call  : 
"  Christ,  it  is  Christ,"  he  bent  to  him  his  head, 
And  the  thin  bitter  lips  hissed  as  they  said  : 

"  The  name  of  Christ  has  been  the  sovereign  curse, 
The  opium  drug  that  kept  us  slaves  to  wrong. 

Fooled  with  a  dream,  we  bowed  to  worse  and  worse  ; 
'  In  heaven/  we  said,  *  He  will  confound  the  strong.' 
O  hateful  treason  that  has  tricked  too  long ! 

"  Had  we  poor  down-trod  millions  never  dreamed 
Your  dream  of  that  hereafter  for  our  woe, 

Had  the  great  powers  that  rule,  no  Father  seemed, 
But  Law  relentless,  long  and  long  ago 
We  had  risen  and  said,  '  We  will  not  suffer  so.' 

"  O  Christ,  O  you  who  found  the  drug  of  heaven, 
To  keep  consoled  an  earth  that  grew  to  hell, 

That  else  to  cleanse  and  cure  its  sores  had  striven, 
We  curse  that  name  ! "     A  fierce  hard  silence  fell, 
And  Jesus  whispered,  "  Oh,  and  I  as  well ! " 


104        The  Mass  of  Christ 

He  raised  his  face !     See,  on  the  Calvary  hill, 
Submissive  with  such  pride,  betrayed  and  taken, 

Transfixed  and  crucified,  the  prey  of  ill, 
Of  a  cup  less  bitter  had  he  there  partaken, 
He  then  by  God,  as  now  by  Man,  forsaken ! 

"  Vain,  was  it  vain,  all  vain  ?  "  had  mocked  him  then  ; 
Now  the  triumphant  gibe  of  hell  had  said, 

"  Not  vain  !  a  curse,  a  speechless  curse  to  men  !  " 
His  great  eyes  gazed  on  it.     He  bowed  his  head, 
Without  a  word,  and  shuddered.     He  was  dead ! 

And  when  I  saw  this,  with  a  low  hoarse  cry 
I  caught  him  to  mine  arms  and  to  my  breast, 

And  put  my  lips  to  his  that  breathed  one  sigh, 
And  kissed  his  eyes,  and  by  his  name  addressed 
My  Friend,  my  Master,  him  whom  I  loved  best. 

"  Jesus,"  I  whispered,  "  Jesus,  Jesus,  speak  !  " 

For  it  did  seem  that  speech  from  him  must  break  ; 

But  suddenly  I  knew  he  would  not  speak, 
Never,  never  again  !     My  heart  did  shake  : 
My  stricken  brain  burst ;  I  shrieked  and  leaped  awake. 


IV 

Down  in  the  woodlands,  where  the  streamlet  runs, 
Close  to  the  breezy  river,  by  the  dells, 

Of  ferns  and  flowers  that  shun  the  summer  suns 
But  gather  round  the  lizard-haunted  wells, 
And  listen  to  the  birds'  sweet  syllables — 

Down  in  the  woodlands,  lying  in  the  shade, 

Among  the  rushes  green  that  shook  and  gleamed, 

I  woke  and  lay,  and  of  my  dream  dreams  made, 
Wondering  if  indeed  I  had  but  dreamed, 
Or  dreamed  but  now,  so  real  that  dream  had  seemed. 


The  Mass  of  Christ         105 

Then  up  above  I  saw  the  turquoise  sky, 
And,  past  the  blowy  tree-tops  swung  aloft, 

Two  pigeons  dared  the  breeze  ecstatically, 

And  happy  frogs,  couched  in  the  verdure  soft, 
Piped  to  each  other  dreamily  and  oft. 

And,  as  I  looked  across  the  flowery  woods, 
Across  the  grasses,  sun  and  shade  bedight, 

Under  the  leaves'  melodious  interludes, 

Flowing  one  way,  the  blessed  birds'  delight, 
I  saw  her  come,  my  love,  clothed  on  with  light ! 

Flowers  she  had,  and  in  her  hair  and  hands, 

Singing  and  stooping,  gathering  them  with  words, 

Whose  music  is  past  all  speech  understands, 
But  God  is  glad  thereof,  as  of  his  birds  ; 
I  watched  her,  listening,  till  I  heard  the  words 

Leap  from  her  lips  of  a  bold  battle-song, 
The  clarion  clear  that  silences  the  strife. 

She  marched  exultantly  to  it  along, 
No  more  a  joyous  girl,  a  sacred  wife, 
But  a  soldier  of  the  Cause  that's  more  than  life ! 

O  well  I  knew  the  song  that  she  was  singing, 
But  now  she  gave  her  music  to  my  rhyme, 

Her  rapturous  music  thro'  the  wild  woods  ringing, 
Asserting  Truth  and  Trust,  arraigning  Crime, 
And  bidding  Justice  "  bring  the  better  time  !  " 

O  Love,  sing  on,  sing  on,  O  girt  with  light, 

Shatter  the  silence  of  the  hopeless  hours  ; 
O  mock  with  song  triumphant  all  the  night, 

O  girl,  O  wife,  O  crowned  with  fruits  and  flowers, 

Till  day  and  dawn  and  victory  are  ours  ! 


io6     To  Queen  Victoria  in  England 


From  a  Verandah 
(Sydney) 

"  Armageddon  " 

/~\   CITY  lapped  in  sun  and  Sabbath  rest, 

^^   With  happy  face  of  plenteous  ease  possessed, 

Have  you  no  doubts  that  whisper,  dreams  that  moan 
Disquietude,  to  stir  your  slumbering  breast  ? 

Think  you  the  sins  of  other  climes  are  gone  ? 
The  harlot's  curse  rings  in  your  streets — the  groan 
Of  out-worn  men,  the  stabbed  and  plundered  slaves 
Of  ever-growing  Greed,  these  are  your  own  ! 

O'er  you  shall  sweep  the  fiery  hell  that  craves 
For  quenchment  the  bright  blood  of  human  waves  : 

For  you,  if  you  repent  not,  shall  atone 
For  Greed's  dark  death-holes  with  War's  swarming  graves ! 


To  Queen  Victoria  in  England 
An  Address  on  her  Jubilee  Year 

MADAM,    you  have  done  well !      Let  others  with  praise 
unholy, 
Speech  addressed  to  a  woman  who  never    breathed    upon 

earth, 
Daub  you  over  with  lies  or  deafen  your  ears  with  folly, 

I  will  praise  you  alone  for  your  actual  imminent  worth. 
Madam,  you  have  done  well  !      Fifty  years  unforgotten 

Pass  since  we  saw  you  first,  a  maiden  simple  and  pure. 
Now  when  every  robber  Landlord,  Capitalist  rotten, 

Hated  oppressors,  praise  you — Madam,  we  are  quite  sure ! 


To  Queen  Victoria  in  England     107 

Never  once  as  a  foe,  open  foe,  to  the  popular  power, 

As  nobler  kings  and  queens,  have  you  faced  us,  fearless  and 

bold  : 

No,  but  in  backstairs  fashion,  in  the  stealthy  twilight  hour, 
You  have  struggled  and  struck  and  stabbed,  you  have  bar- 
tered and  bought  and  sold  ! 

Melbourne,  the  listless  liar,  the  gentleman  blood-beslavered, 
Disraeli,  the  faithless  priest  of  a  cynical  faith  outworn — 
These  were  dear    to    your    heart,    these    were    the  men  you 

favoured, 

Those  whom  the  People  loved  were  fooled  and  flouted  and 
torn ! 

Never  in  one  true  cause,  for  your  people's  sake  and  the  light's 

sake, 
Did  you  strike  one  honest  blow,  did  you  speak  one  noble 

word  : 
No,  but  you  took  your  place,  for  the  sake  of  wrong  and  the 

night's  sake, 

Ever  with  blear-eyed  wealth,  with  the  greasy  respectable  herd. 

Not  as  some  robber  king,  with  a  resolute  minister  slave  to  you,* 

Did  you  swagger  with  force  against  us  to  satisfy  your  greed  : 

No,  but  you  hoarded  and  hid  what  your  loyal  people  gave  to 

you, 
Golden  sweat  of  their  toil,  to  keep  you  a  queen  indeed ! 

Pure  at  least  was  your  bed  ?  pure  was  your  Court  ? — We  know 

not. 
Were  the  white  sepulchres  pure  ?     Gather  men  thorns  of 

grapes  ? 
Your  sons  and  your  blameless   Spouse's,  certes,  as   Galahads 

show  not. 

Round  you  gather  a  crowd  of  horrible  hypocrite  shapes  ! 
Never,  sure,  did  one  woman  produce  in  such  sixes  and  dozens 

Such  intellectual  canaille  as  this  that  springs  from  you  ; 
Sons,  daughters,  grandchildren,  with  uncles,  aunts  and  cousins, 
Not  a  man  or  a  woman  among  them — a  wretched  crew  ! 

*  Charles  I.  and  Strafforcl,  e.g. 


io8  Elsie 

Madam,  you  have  done  well !     You  have  fed  all  these  to  reple- 
tion— 

You  have  put  up  a  gilded  calf  beside  a  gilded  cow, 
And  bidden  men  and  women  behold  the  forms  of  human  com- 
pletion— 

Albert  the  Good,  Victoria  the  Virtuous,  for  ever — and  now  ! 
But  what  to  you  were  our  bravest  and  best,  man  of  science  and 

poet, 
Struggling  for  Light  and  Truth,  or  the  Women  who  would 

be  free  ? 

Carlyle,  Darwin,  Huxley,  Spencer,  Arnold  ?     We  know  it — 
Tennyson  slavers  your  hand  ;   Burdett-Coutts  fawns  at  your 
knee! 


Good,  you  were  good,  we  say.     You  had  no  wit  to  be  evil. 

Your  purity  shines  serene  over  virgins  mangled  and  dead. 
You  wasted  not  our  substance  in  splendour,  in  riot  or  revel — 

You  quietly  sat  in  the  shade  and  grew  fat  on  our  wealth 

instead. 
Madam,  you  have  done  well !     To  you,  we  say,  has  been  given 

A  wit  past  the  wit  of  women,  a  supercomputable  worth. 
Of  you   we  can    say,   if  not   "of  such   are  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven," 

Of  such  (alas  for  us  !),  of  such  are  the  Kingdom  of  Earth  / 


Elsie 

A  Memory 

T    ITTLE  elfin  maid, 
*-*  Old,  though  scarce  two  years, 
With  your  big  dark  hazel  eyes 
Tenderer  than  tears, 


Why  He  Loves  Her        109 

And  your  rosebud  mouth 

Lisping  jocund  things, 
Breaking  brooding  silence  with 

Wistful  questionings! 

Like  a  flower  you  grew 

While  life's  bright  sun  shone. 
Does  the  greedy  spendthrift  earth 

Heed  a  flower  is  gone  ? 

No  ;  but  Love's  fond  ken, 

That  gropes  through  Death's  dark  ways, 
Almost  seems  to  hear  your  Voice, 

Seems  to  see  your  Face  ! 


Why  He  Loves  Her 


V7"OU  ask  me  why  I  love  her, 
As  I  love  nought  on  earth  ? 
Why  I'll  put  none  above  her 

For  sorrow  or  for  mirth  ? 
Though  there  be  others  fairer  ; 
In  spirit,  richer,  rarer  ; 
With  none  will  I  compare  her, 

Who  is  to  me  all  worth ! 

I  love  her  for  her  beauty, 

Her  force,  her  fire,  her  youth, 
For  kisses  cold  as  duty 

Bespeak  not  love,  but  ruth. 
I  love  her  for  the  treasure 
Of  all  the  rapturous  pleasure 
Her  love  gives  without  measure 
Of  passion  and  of  truth  ! 


no  To  His  Love 

I  love  her  firm  possession 
Of  instincts  fair  and  true  ; 

Her  hatred  of  oppression 
And  all  the  wrong  men  do  ; 

Her  fiery,  unflawed  purity, 

Her  spirit's  proud  security, 

Defying  all  futurity, 

And  fate  and  fortune  too. 

And  O,  my  love,  I  love  you 

For  where  words  faint  and  fall 
Something  in  you  above  you, 

Some  mystery  magical ; 
Some  spell  that's  past  concealing, 
Some  influence  past  revealing, 
Some  deeper  depth  than  feeling 
And  life  and  death  and  all  ! 


To  His  Love 

(With  his  first  book  of  «  Songs ") 

*  1VT  ^  Sweet,  my  Child,  through  all  this  night 

Of  dark  and  wind  and  rain, 
Where  thunder  crashes,  and  the  light 
Sears  the  bewildered  brain, 

"  It  is  your  Face,  your  lips,  your  eyes 

I  see  rise  up  ;   I  hear 
Your  Voice  that  sobs  and  calls  and  cries, 
Or  shrills  and  mocks  at  fear. 

"  O  this  that's  mine  is  yours  as  well, 

For  side  by  side  our  feet 
Trod  through  these  bitter  brakes  of  hell. 
Take  it,  my  Child,  my  Sweet !  " 


A   Story  in 


To  the  Emperor  William  II. 

LONDON,  May  15,  1889. — "The  promised  interview  with  the  Emperor 
William  was  granted  to-day  to  the  delegates  from  the  coal-miners  now  on 
strike  in  Westphalia  ;  but  the  audience  lasted  for  only  ten  minutes.  The 
men  asked  that  the  Emperor  would  inquire  into  the  merits  of  their  case 
and  the  hardships  under  which  they  suffered.  His  Majesty  replied  that 
he  was  already  inquiring  into  the  matter.  He  then  warned  the  miners 
that  he  would  employ  all  his  great  powers  to  repress  socialistic  agitation 
and  intrigue.  If  the  slightest  resistance  was  shown  he  would  shoot  every 
man  so  offending.  On  the  other  hand,  he  promised  to  protect  them  if 
peaceable." — Cablegram. 

CON  of  a  Man  and  grandson  of  a  Man, 

^  Mannikin  most  miserable  in  thy  shrunken  shape 
And  peevish,  shrivelled  soul,  is't  thou  wouldst  ape 

The  thunder-bearer  of  Fate's  blustering  clan  ? 

Know,  then,  that  never,  since  the  years  began, 
The  terrible  truth  was  surer  of  this  word  : 
"  Who  takes  the  sword,  shall  perish  by  the  sword  !  " 

For  mankind's  nod  makes  mannikin  and  man. 

Surely  it  was  not  shed  too  long  ago, 

That  Emperor's  blood  that  stained  the  northern  snow, 
O  thou  King  Stork  aspiring  that  art  King  Log, 
Wild-boar  that  wouldst  be,  reeking  there  all  hog, 

To  teach  thy  brutish  brainlessness  to  know 

Those  who  pulled  down  a  Lion  can  shoot  a  Dog. 


A  Story 

(For  the  Irish  Delegates  In  Australia) 

r\O  you  want  to  hear  a  story, 
^"^   With  a  nobler  praise  than  "  glory," 

Of  a  man  who  loved  the  right  like  heaven  and   loathed   the 
wrong  like  hell  ? 


H2  A  Story 

Then,  that  story  let  me  tell  you 
Once  again,  though  it  as  well  you 
Know  as  I — the  splendid  story  of  the  man  they  call  Parnell ! 

By  the  wayside  of  the  nations, 

Lashed  with  whips  and  execrations, 

Helpless,  hopeless,  bleeding,  dying,  she,  the  Maiden   Nation, 
lay; 

And  the  burthen  of  dishonour 

Weighed  so  grievously  upon  her 
That  her  very  children  hid  their  eyes  and  crept  in  shame  away. 

And  there  as  she  was  lying 
Helpless,  hopeless,  bleeding,  dying, 
All  her  high-born  foes  came  round  her,  fleering,  jeering,  as  they 

said  : 

"  What  is  freedom  fought  and  won  for  ? 
She  is  down  !     She's  dead  and  done  for !  " 
And  her  weeping   children    shuddered  as  they  crouched  and 
whispered:  "Dead!'' 

Then  suddenly  up-starting, 
All  that  throng  before  him  parting, 
See,  a  Man  with  firm  step  breaking  through  yon  central  knot 

that  gives  ; 

And,  as  by  some  dear  lost  sister, 
He  knelt  down,  and  softly  kissed  her, 

And  he  raised  his  pale,  proud  face,  and  cried  :  "  She  is  not 
dead.     She  lives ! 


"  O  she  lives,  I  say,  and  I  here, 

I  am  come  to  fight  and  die  here 
For  the  love  my  heart  has  for  her  like  a  slow  consuming  fire ; 

For  the  love  of  her  low-lying, 

For  the  hatred  deep,  undying 

Of  the  robber  lords  who  struck  and  stabbed  and  trod  her  in  the 
mire !  " 


A  Story  113 

Then  upon  that  cry  bewildering, 

Some  of  them,  her  hapless  children — 

In  their  hearts  there  leaped  up  hope  like  light  when  night  gives 
birth  to  day ; 

And,  as  mocks  and  threats  defied  him, 

One  by  one  they  came  beside  him, 
Till  they  stood,  a  band  of  heroes,  sombre,  desperate,  at  bay ! 

And  the  battle  that  they  fought  there, 

And  the  bitter  truth  they  taught  there 
To  the  blinded  Sister-Nation  suffering  grievously  alway, 

All  the  wrong  and  rapine  past  hers, 

Of  her  lords  and  her  task-masters, 
Is  not  this  the  larger  hope  of  all  as  night  gives  birth  to  day  ? 

For  the  lords  and  liars  are  quaking 

At  the  People's  stern  awaking 
From  their  slumber  of  the  ages  ;  and  the  Peoples  slowly  rise, 

And  with  hands  locked  tight  together, 

One  in  heart  and  soul  for  ever, 
Watch  the  sun  of  Light  and  Liberty  leap  up  into  the  skies ! 

That's  the  story,  that's  the  story 
With  a  nobler  praise  than  "  glory," 
Of  the  Man  who  loved  the  right  like  heaven  and  loathed  the 

wrong  like  hell, 

And  with  calm,  proud  exultation 
Bade  her  stand  at  last  a  nation, 

Ire' and,  Ireland  that  is  one  name  with  the  name  of  Charles 
Parnell ! 


ii4     At  the  West  India  Docks 

At  the  West  India  Docks 

(A  Memory  of  August,  1883) 

[The  spectacle  of  the  life  of  the  London  Dock  labourers  is  one  of  the 
most  terrible  examples  of  the  logical  outcome  of  the  present  social  system. 
In  the  six  great  metropolitan  docks  over  100,000  men  are  employed,  the 
great  bulk  of  whom  are  married  and  have  families.  By  the  elaborate 
system  of  sub-contracts  their  wages  have  been  driven  down  to  4d.,  jd.,  and 
even  ad.  for  the  few  hours  they  are  employed,  making  the  average  weekly 
earnings  of  a  man  amount  to  7,  6,  and  even  5  shillings  a  week.  Hun- 
dreds and  hundreds  of  lives  are  lost  or  ruined  every  year  by  the  perilous 
nature  of  the  work,  and  absolutely  without  compensation.  Yet  so 
fierce  is  the  competition  that  men  are  not  unfrequently  maimed  or  even 
killed  in  the  desperate  struggles  at  the  gates  for  the  tickets  of  employment, 
guaranteeing  a  "pay"  which  often  does  not  amount  to  more  than  a  few 
pence  !  The  streets  and  houses  inhabited  by  this  unfortunate  class  are  of 
the  lowest  kind — haunts  of  vice,  disease  and  death,  and  the  monopolistic 
companies  are  thus  directly  able  to  make  profit  of  their  wholesale  demoral- 
ization by  ruthlessly  crushing  out,  through  the  contractors,  all  efforts  at 
organization  on  the  part  of  the  men.  To  see  these  immense  docks,  the 
home  of  that  more  immense  machine,  British  Commerce,  crowded  with 
huge  and  stately  ships,  steamers,  and  sailers  the  first  in  the  world,  and  to 
watch  with  intelligent  eyes  by  what  means  the  colossal  work  of  loading  and 
unloading  them  is  carried  out  ;  this  is  to  face  a  sacrificial  orgy  of  human 
life — childhood,  youth,  manhood,  womanhood,  and  age,  with  everything  that 
makes  them  beautiful  and  ennobling,  and  not  merely  a  misery  and  a  curse 
— far  more  appalling  than  any  Juggernaut  process  of  the  human  holocausts 
that  were  offered  up  to  Phoenician  Moloch.] 

T  STOOD  in  the  ghastly  gleaming  night  by  the  swollen,  sullen 

1      flow 

Of  the  dreadful  river  that  rolls  her  tides  through  the  City  of 

Wealth  and  Woe ; 
And  mine  eyes  were  heavy  with  sleepless  hours,  and  dry  with 

desperate  grief, 
And  my  brain  was  throbbing  and  aching,  and  mine  anguish  had 

no  relief. 

For  never  a  moment — no  ;  not  one — through  all  the  dreary  day, 
And  thro'  all  the  weary  night  forlorn,  would  the  pitiless  pulses 

stay 

Of  the  thundering  great  Machinery  that  such  insistence  had, 
As  it  crushed  out  human  hearts  and  souls,  that  it  slowly  drove 

me  mad. 


At  the  West  India  Docks     115 

And  there,  in  the  dank  and  foetid  mist,  as  I,  silent  and  tearless, 

stood, 

And  the  river's  exhalations,  sweating  forth  their  muddy  blood, 
Breathed   full  on  my  face    and  poisoned  me,   like   the  slow, 

putrescent  drain 
That   carries  away  from  the  shambles  the  refuse  of  flesh  and 

brain — 

There  rose  up  slowly  before  me,  in  the  dome  of  the  city's  light, 
A  vast  and  shadowy  Substance,  with  shafts  and  wheels  of  might, 
Tremendous,  ruthless,  fatal  ;   and  1  knew  the  visible  shape 
Of  that  thundering  great  Machinery  from  which  there  was  no 

escape. 

It  stood  there  high  in  the  heavens,  fronting  the  face  of  God, 
And  the  spray  it  sprinkled  had  blasted  the  green  and  flowery  sod 
All  round  where,  through  stony  precincts,  its  Cyclopean  pillars 

fell 
To  its  adamantine  foundations  that  were  fixed  in  the  womb  of 

hell. 
And  the  birds  that,  wild  and  whirling,  and  moth-like,  flew  to  its 

glare 
Were    struck    by  the    flying  wheel-spokes,   and    maimed   and 

murdered  there  ; 

And  the  dust  that  swept  about  its  black  panoply  overhead, 
And  the  din  of  it  seemed  to   shatter  and  scatter  the  sheeted 

dead. 


But  mine  eyes  were  fixed  on  the  people  that  sought  this  horrible 

den, 
And  they  mounted  in  thronged  battalions,  children  and  women 

and  men, 

Right  out  from  the  low  horizon,  more  far  than  eye  could  see, 
From  the  north  and  the  south  and  the  east  and  the  west,  they 

came  perpetually — 
Some  silent,  some  raving,  some  sobbing,  some  laughing,  some 

cursing,  some  crying, 
Some  alone,  some  with  others,  some  struggling,  some  dragging 

the  dead  and  the  dying, 


n6    At  the  West  India  Docks 

Up  to  the  central  Wheel  enormous  with   its  wild  devouring 

breath 
That  winnowed  the  livid  smoke-clouds  and  the  sickening  fume 

of  death. 

Then  suddenly,  as  I  watched  it  all,  a  keen  wind  blew  amain, 
And  the  air  grew  clearer  and  purer,  and  I  could  see  it  plain — 
How  under  the  central  Wheel  a  black  stone  Altar  stood, 
And  a  great,  gold  Idol  upon  it  was  gleaming  like  fiery  blood. 
And  there,  in  front  of  the  Altar,  was  a  huge,  round  lurid  Pit, 
And  the  thronged  battalions  were  marching  to  the  yawning 

mouth  of  it 
In  the  clangour  of  the  Machinery  and  the  Wheel's  devouring 

breath 
That  winnowed  the  livid  smoke-clouds  and  the  sickening  fume 

of  death. 

And  once  again,  as  I  gazed  there,  and  the  keen  wind  still  blew  on, 
I  saw  the  shape  of  the  Idol  like  a  Queen  turned  carrion, 
Yet  crowned  and  more  terrific  thus  for  her  human  fleshly  loss, 
And  with  one  clenched  hand  she  brandished  a  lash,  and  the 

other  held  up  a  cross  ! 

And  all  around  the  Altar  were  seated,  joyous  and  free, 
In  garments  richly-coloured  and  choice,  a  goodly  company, 
Eating  and  drinking  and  wantoning,  like  gods  that  scorned  to 

know 
Of  the  thundering  great  Machinery  and  the  crowds  and  the  Pit 

below. 

Ah,  Christ !   the  sights  and  the  sounds  there  that  every  hour 

befell 
Would  wring  the  heart  of  the  devils  spinning  ropes  of  sand  in 

hell, 

But  not  the  insolent  Revellers  in  their  old  lascivious  ease — 
Children,  hollow-eyed,  starving,  consumed  alive  with  disease ; 
Boys  and  men  tortured  to  fiends  and  branded  with  shuddering 

fire ; 
Women  and  girls  shrieking  caught,  and  whored,  and  trampled  to 

death  in  the  mire  ; 


At  the  West  India  Docks     1 1 7 

Babyhood,   youth,   and  manhood  and  womanhood  that  might 

have  been, 
Kneaded,  a  bloody  pulp,  to  feed  the  gold-grinding  murderous 

Machine ! 

And  still,  with  aching  eyeballs,  I  stared  at  that  hateful  sight, 
At  the  long  dense  lines  of  the  people  and  the  shafts  and  wheels 

of  might, 

When  slowly,  slowly  emerging,  I  saw  a  great  Globe  rise, 
Blood-red  on  the  dim  horizon,  and  it  swam  up  into  the  skies. 
But  whether  indeed  it  were  the  sun  or  the  moon,  I  could  not  say, 
For  I  knew  not  now  in  my  watching  if  it  were  night  or  day. 
But  when  that  great  Globe  steadied  above  the  central  Wheel, 
The  thronged  battalions   wavered  and    paused,   and  an  awful 

silence  fell. 

Then  (I  know  not  how,  but  so  it  was)  in  a  moment  the  flash  of 

an  eye — 
A  murmur  ran  and  rose  to  a  voice,  and  the  voice  to  a  terrible 

cry: 
"  Enough,  enough !     It  has  had  enough  !     We  will  march  no 

more  till  we  drop 
In  the  furnace  Pit.     Give  us  food !     Give  us  rest !     Though 

the  accursed  Machinery  stop  !  " 
And  then,  with  a  shout  of  angry  fear,  the  Revellers  sprang  to 

their  feet, 

And  the  call  was  for  cannon  and  cavalry,  for  rifle  and  bayonet. 
And  One  rose  up,  a  leader  of  them,  lifting  a  threatening  rod, 
And  "  Stop  the  Machinery ! "  he  yelled,  "  you  might  as  well 

stop  God ! " 

But  the  terrible  thunder-cry  replied  :  "  If  this  indeed  must  be, 
It  is  YOU  should  be  cast  to  the  furnace  Pit  to  feed  the  Machine 

— not  WE  !  " 
And   the   central    wheel  enormous  slowed  down   in  groaning 

plight, 
And  all  the  aerial  movement  ceased  of  the  shafts  and  wheels  of 

might, 
And  a  superhuman  clamour  leaped  madly  to  where  overhead 


1 1 8  Dirge 


The  great  Globe  swung   in  the  gathering  gloom,  portentous, 

huge,  blood-red! 
But  my  brain  whirled  round  and  my  blinded  eyes  no  more 

could  see  or  know, 
Till  I  struggling  seemed  to  awake  at  last  by  the  swollen  sullen 

flow 
Of  the  dreadful  river  that  rolls  her  tides  through  the  City  of 

Wealth  and  Woe  ! 


Dirge 

(Brisbane) 

A  little  Soldier  of  the  Army  of  the  Night " 

O  URY  him  without  a  word  ! 
^   No  appeal  to  death  ; 
Only  the  call  of  the  bird 

And  the  blind  spring's  breath. 

Nature  slays  ten,  yet  the  one 

Reaches  but  to  a  part 
Of  what's  to  be  done,  to  be  sung. 

Keep  we  a  proud  heart ! 

Let  us  not  glose  her  waste 

With  lies  and  dreams  ; 
Fawn  on  her  wanton  haste, 

Say  it  but  seems. 

Comrades,  with  faces  unstirred, 

Scorning  grief's  dole, 
Though  with  him,  with  him  lies  interred 

Our  heart  and  soul, 


Fling  out  the  Flag         1 1 9 


Bury  him  without  a  word ! 

No  appeal  to  death  ; 
Only  the  call  of  the  bird 

And  the  blind  spring's  breath. 


Fling  out  the  Flag 
(For  the  Australian  Labour  Federation) 

TILING  out  the  Flag!    Let  her  flap  and  rise  in  the  rush  of 

*•       the  eager  air, 

With  the  ring  of  the  wild  swan's  wings  as  she  soars  from  the 

swamp  and  her  reedy  lair. 
Fling  out  the  Flag !     And  let  friend  and  foe  behold,  for  gain 

or  loss, 
The  sign  of  our  faith  and  the  fight  we  fight,  the  Stars  of  the 

Southern  Cross ! 
Oh  !  Blue's  for  the  sky  that  is  fair  for  all,  whoever,  wherever 

he  be, 
And   Silver's   the  light   that   shines  on   all  for  hope  and    for 

liberty, 

And  that's  the  desire  that  burns  in  our  hearts,  for  ever  quench- 
less and  bright, 
And  that's  the  sign  of  our  flawless  faith  and  the  glorious  fight 

we  fight ! 

What  is  the  wealthiest  land  on  earth,  if  the  millions  suffer  and 

cry, 
And  all  but  the  happy  selfish  Few  would  fain  curse  God  and 

die  ? 
What  are  the  glorious  Arts,   as   they  sit   and   sing   on  their 

jewelled  thrones, 
If  their  hands  are  wet  with  blood  and  their  feet  befouled  with 

festering  bones  ? 


I2O         Fling  out  the  Flag 

What  are  the  splendid  Sciences,  driving  Nature  with  a  bit  of 

steel, 
If  only  the  Rich  can  mount  the  car  and  the  Poor  are  dragged 

at  the  wheel  ? 
Wealth  is  a  curse,  and  Art  a  mock,  and  Science  worse  than  a 

He, 
When  they're  but  the  gift  of  the  greedy  Thieves,  the  leeches 

that  suck  men  dry  ! 


Nay,  brothers,  nay !  it  is  not  for  this — for  a  land  of  wealth  and 

woe — 
That  we  hoped  and  trusted  all  these  years,  that  we  toiled  and 

struggled  so ! 

It  is  not  for  a  race  of  taskmasters  and  pitiful  cringing  slaves, 
That  our  strength  and  skill  raised  up  happy  homes  and  dreamed 

of  fearless  graves. 
It  is  not  for  a  Cause  that  is  less  than  for  all,  that  is  not  for  Truth 

but  a  lie, 
That  we  raise  our  faces  and  grip  our  hands,  and  lift  our  voices 

high, 
As  we  fling  out  the  Flag  that  friend  and  foe  may  see,  for  gain  or 

loss, 
The  sign  of  our  faith  and  the  fight  we  fight,  the  Stars  of  the 

Southern  Cross ! 


As  the  sky  above  is  fair  for  all,  whoever,  wherever  he  be, 

As  the  blessed  stars  on  all  shed  their  light  of  hope  and  of 

liberty  : 
So  let  the  earth,  this  fertile  earth,   this  well-loved  Southern 

land, 

Be  fair  to  all,  be  free  to  all,  from  strand  to  shining  strand ! 
Let   boy   and   girl   and   woman    and   man   in    it   at   least   be 

sure, 
That  all  can  earn  their  daily  bread  with  hearts  as  proud  as 

pure; 

Let  man  and  woman  and  girl  and  boy  in  it  for  ever  be 
Heirs  to  the  best  this  world  can  give,  happy,  fearless,  free ! 


Farewell  to  the  Children      121 

Fling  out  the  Flag  /     Let  her  flap  and  rise  in  the  rusk  of  the 

eager  air, 
With  the  ring  of  the  wild  swan's  wings  as  she  soars  from  the 

swamp  and  her  reedy  lair  ! 

Fling  out  the  Flag!  and  let  friend  and  foe  behold,  for  gain  or  loss, 
The  sign  of  our  faith  and  the  fight  we  fight,  the  Stars  of  the 

Southern  Cross  ! 

Oh  /  Blue's  the  sky  that  is  fair  for  all,  whoever,  wherever  he  be, 
And  Silver's  the  light  that  shines  on  all,  for  hope  and  for  liberty; 
And  that's  the  desire  that  burns  in  our  hearts,  for  ever  quenchless 

and  bright, 
And  that's  the  sign  of  our  fiawless  Jaith,  and  the  glorious  fight  we 

fight. 


Farewell  to  the  Children 

TN  the  early  summer  morning 

I  stand  and  watch  them  come, 
The  Children  to  the  School-house  ; 
They  chatter  and  laugh  and  hum. 

The  little  boys  with  satchels 

Slung  round  them,  and  the  Girls 

Each  with  hers  swinging  in  her  hand ; 
I  love  their  sunnny  curls. 

I  love  to  see  them  playing, 

Romping  and  shouting  with  glee, 

The  boys  and  girls  together, 
Simple,  fearless,  free. 

I  love  to  see  them  marching 

In  squads,  in  file,  in  line, 
Advancing  and  retreating, 

Tramping,  keeping  time. 


122      Farewell  to  the  Children 

Sometimes  a  little  lad 

With  a  bright  brave  face  I'll  see, 
And  a  wistful  yearning  wonder 

Comes  stealing  over  me. 

For  once  I  too  had  a  Darling ; 

I  dreamed  what  he  should  do, 
And  surely  he'd  have  had,  I  thought, 

Just  such  a  face  as  You. 

And  I,  I  dreamed  to  see  him 
Noble  and  brave  and  strong, 

Loving  the  light,  the  lovely, 
Hating  the  dark,  the  wrong, 

Loving  the  poor,  the  People, 

Ready  to  smile  and  give 
Blood  and  brain  to  their  service, 

For  them  to  die  or  live  ! 

No  matter,  O  little  Darlings  ! 

Little  Boys,  you  shall  be 
My  Citizens  for  faithful  labour, 

My  Soldiers  for  victory ! 

Little  Girls,  I  charge  you 
Be  noble  sweethearts,  wives, 

Mothers — comrades  the  sweetest, 
Fountains  of  happy  lives  ! 

Farewell,  O  little  Darlings  ! 

Far  away — with  strangers,  too — 
He  sleeps,  the  little  Darling, 

I  dreamed  to  see  like  you. 

And  I,  O  little  Darlings, 

I  have  many  miles  to  go, 
And  where  I  too  may  stop  and  sleep, 

And  when,  I  do  not  know. 


Epodi 


123 


But  I  charge  you  to  remember 
The  love,  the  trust  I  had, 

That  you'd  be  noble,  fearless,  free, 
And  make  your  country  glad. 

That  you  should  toil  together, 
Face  whatever  yet  shall  be, 

My  citizens  for  faithful  labour, 
My  soldiers  for  victory. 

I  charge  you  to  remember  ; 

I  bless  you  with  my  hand, 
And  I  know  the  hour  is  coming 

When  you  shall  understand  : 

When  you  shall  understand  too, 
Why,  as  I  said  farewell, 

Although  my  lips  were  smiling, 
The  shining  tears  down  fell. 


Epode 

L>  EYOND  the  Night,  down  o'er  the  labouring  East, 
*-*  I  see  light's  harbinger  of  day  released  : 
Upon  the  false  gleam  of  the  ante-dawn, 
Lo,  the  fair  heaven  of  sun-pursuing  morn. 

Beyond  the  lampless  sleep  and  perishing  death, 
That  hold  my  heart,  I  feel  my  New  Life's  breath, — 
I  see  the  face  my  Spirit-shape  shall  have 
When  this  frail  clay  and  dust  have  fled  the  grave. 


124  Epode 


Beyond  the  Night,  the  death  of 'doubt ,  defeat, 
Rise  dawn  and  morn,  and  life  with  light  doth  meet. 
For  the  great  cause,  too, — sure  as  the  Sun,  yon  ray 
Shoots  up  to  strike  the  threatening  clouds  and  say  : 
I  come,  and  with  me  comes  the  victorious  Day  ! 


When  I  was  young,  the  Muse  I  worshipped  took  me, 
Fearless,  a  lonely  heart,  to  look  on  men. 
"  'Tis  yours,"  said  she,  "  to  paint  this  show  of  them 

Even  as  they  are."     Then  smiling  she  forsook  me. 

Wherefore  with  passionate  patience  I  withdrew, 

With  eyes  from  which  all  loves,  hates,  hopes  and  fears, 
Joy's  aureole  and  the  blinding  sheen  of  tears, 

Were  purged  away.     And  what  I  saw  I  drew. 

Then,  as  I  worked  remote,  serene,  alone, 

A  Child-girl  came  to  me  and  touched  my  cheek  ; 
And  lo  her  lips  were  pale,  her  limbs  were  weak, 

Her  eyes  had  thirst's  desire  and  hunger's  moan. 

She  said  :  "  I  am  the  Soul  of  this  sad  day 

Where  thousands  toil  and  suffer  hideous  Crime, 
Where  units  rob  and  mock  the  empty  time 

With  revel  and  rank  prayer  and  death's  display." 

I  said  :  "  O  Child,  how  shall  I  leave  my  songs, 
My  songs  and  tales,  the  warp  and  subtle  woof 
Of  this  great  work  and  web,  in  your  behoof 

To  strive  and  passionately  sing  of  wrongs  ? 

"  Child,  is  it  nothing  that  I  here  fulfil 

My  heart  and  soul  ?  that  I  may  look  and  see 
Where  Homer  bends,  and  Shakspere  smiles  on  me, 

And  Goethe  praises  the  unswerving  will  ? " 


Epode 


I25 


She  hung  her  head,  and  straight,  without  a  word, 
Passed  from  me.     And  I  raised  my  concious  face 
To  where,  in  beauteous  power  in  her  place, 

She  stood,  the  Muse,  my  Muse,  and  watched  and  heard. 

Her  proud  and  marble  brow  was  faintly  flushed  ; 
Upon  her  flawless  lips  and  in  her  eyes 
A  mild  light  flickered  as  the  young  sunrise 

Glad,  sacred,  terrible,  serene  and  hushed. 

Then  I  cried  out,  and  rose  with  pure  wrath  wild 
Desperate  with  hatred  of  Fate's  slavery 
And  this  cold  cruel  Demon.     With  that  cry, 

I  left  her  and  sought  out  the  piteous  Child. 

"  Darling,  'fis  noffang  that  I  shed  and  weep 
These  tears  of  fire  that  wither  all  the  heart, 
These  bloody  sweats  that  drain  and  sear  and  smart. 

I  love  you,  and  you'll  tyss  me  when  I  sleep  /  " 


THE    END 


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